# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 





{UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,} 



LESSONS FROM BIOGRAPHY 



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Through twilight shades of good and ill 

Ye dow are panting up life's hill, 

And more than common strength and skill 

Must ye display, 
If ye would give the better will 

Its lawful sway. 

[Wordsworth to the Sons of Burns.] 



* 



PHILADELPHIA: 

AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 

No. 1122 Chestnut Street. 



NEW YORK: 599 BROADWAY. 



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1THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by the 

AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for 
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



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PREFACE. 



This volume consists in part of articles already 
published by the author in a popular periodical. 
They have been enlarged and new ones added. 
That the work may lead each of its readers to yield 
to their nobler aspirations, to acquire a more sub- 
stantial morality; to cherish kinder feelings, and to 
seek an interest in religion, is the devout wish of 

the author. 

H. B. 
Warren. R. I 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

A Christian Ambition. 

PAGE 

Romney — Montgomery — Churchill — Cowper 9 

II. 

Youth in its Relations to a Long and Satisfactory 

Life. 
Wesley — Burns — Johnson — Hartley Coleridge — 
Shelley 23 

III. 

A Successful Life Within the Reach of All. 

Eminent men who have died early — Who have over- 
come Obstacles — Illustrations from Burton — Mrs. 
E. C. Judson— Prof. Heyne 49 

IV. 

Nature's Noblemen. 
Baron Cuvier — George Stephenson — William Cobbett 
— Bunhill Fields 67 

V. 

The Spiritual Life. 

Cardinal Richelieu — Whitefield — Thomas Walsh — 
Cowper — Jonathan Edwards — Aaron Burr 83 

1* 5 



CONTENTS. 



VI. 

The Experimental Evidence. 

PAGE 

Cowper — Mrs. Edwards — Religious Experience in 
Sickness — In Trial — At the Hour of Death 97 

VII. 

An Impediment to Faith. 

An Experience , 123 

VIII. 

Life in Earnest. 
Summerfield 133 

IX. 

The Mission of Sympathy. 

Sir Philip Sidney — Vincent de Paul — Mrs. Unwin — 
Klopstock 145 

X. 

Life's Close and its Lessons. 

Addison — Lord Rochester — Voltaire — Cardinal 
Mazarin — Hobbes — Paine — Voiney — Shelley — 
Churchill — Gibbon — Hume — Lord Chesterfield — 
Madame de Pompadour — Duke of Buckingham — 
A Man of Pleasure — Gordon Hall — Fletcher — 
Whitefield— The Poet Nichol— Great Triumphs 161 

Concluding Remarks * 187 



I. 

A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 



ROMSEY— MONTGOMERY— CHURCHILL— COWPER. 



A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 

ROMNEY — MONTGOMERY — CHURCHILL — 
COWPER. 

T) OMNEY, the celebrated English painter, 
was a most worthy man, and highly re- 
garded the dignity of his art. "He consi- 
dered the act of painting/' says Hay ley, "as an 
act of devotion, in which he was expressing his 
gratitude to Heaven for such talents as were 
given him, by his solicitude to exert them in a 
manner that might conduce to the great interest 
of mankind." A lady once remarked in his 
presence that, "though emulation often pro- 
duced evil among artists, it appeared necessary 
for calling forth their talents, and, if it were 
not for that spirit, there appeared nothing to 

9 



10 A CHKISTIAN AMBITION. 

animate the genius of a painter." " Yes, there 
is," replied Romney, "and a more powerful 
incentive to laudable exertion." "Pray, sir, 
what is it?" asked the lady. "Religion!" 
was the emphatic answer. 

We behold men eager for noise and applause. 
They rise by tremendous struggles. They set 
aside the requirements of religion and human- 
ity that oppose them. They endeavour to up- 
rear for themselves monuments that shall per- 
petuate their names for ages. They grow old, 
and find that they have followed what is heart- 
less and unsubstantial. They die, and their 
names are soon forgotten, or live as idle sounds. 
The monuments of their fame crumble, 
and the records fall in an undistinguishable 
mass. 

Religion leads men to realize accountableness 
for their particular gifts; it imparts to them 
the desire to elevate their species, and to be 
loved for what is good, rather than trumpeted 
for what is vain. 

Religion is the foundation on which to build 



A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 11 

a satisfactory life. " Length of days are in her 
right hand, and in her left hand riches and 
honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, 
and all her paths are peace." Vanity is 
ephemeral, truth is eternal, and they alone who 
are leaders in the march of truth become can- 
onized in the affections of men. A mere name 
with a few historic associations is as cold and 
uneloquent as the dumb marble on which it is 
chiselled. 

" Marble frets and crumbles 
Back into undistinguishable dust 
At last, and epitaphs, grooved into brass, 
Yield piecemeal to the hungry elements ; 
But truths that drop plumb to the depths of time 
Anchor the name forever."* 

James Montgomery is an admirable illustra- 
tion of the power of religion in making life 
truly successful and praiseworthy. He devoted 
himself largely to missionary enterprises, and 
his name is intimately connected with most of 

* " The talent of success is nothing more than doing 
what you can do well, without the thought of fame." 

Longfellow. 



12' A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 

the philanthropic movements of his times. The 
abolition of the cruel system of chimney- 
sweeping — a system by which the lives of 
children were imperilled and often sacrificed 
— owed much to his efforts, as did the abolition 
of slavery in the British colonies. He long 
edited a paper devoted to humane and Christian 
interests. His excellence as a Christian poet 
is universally acknowledged, and some of his 
lyrics will live as long as the language. He 
died an octogenarian, endeared to the poor of 
his country, and to all Christian denominations 
throughout the world. Montgomery was com- 
paratively unambitious, but his deep, fervent 
piety bent his talents steadily to the noblest 
ends. It kept tender the sensibilities of youth ; 
it destroyed the baser passions ; it absorbed all 
the energies in the one great effort to elevate 
and regenerate mankind. He gave to the 
world his sympathy, and the sympathy of the 
world w r as his; he gave to religion the full 
scope of his abilities, and left his name on the 
imperishable pages of Christian history. " As 



A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 13 

all of my hymns/' he remarked, in his last 
days, "embody some portion of the joys or sor- 
rows, the hopes or the fears, of this poor heart, 
so I cannot doubt that they will be found an 
acceptable vehicle of the expression of the ex- 
perience of many of my fellow-creatures who 
may be similarly exercised during the pilgrim- 
age of their Christian life." How unselfish 
the motives that prompted such compositions ! 
How delightful to recall the labours of such a 
life! Biography affords few incidents more 
pleasing than that of the venerable poet at the 
Church Missionary Jubilee of 1848. It was 
celebrated simultaneously in all the depart- 
ments of the Society throughout the world. 
Montgomery was called upon to compose the 
hymn for the great occasion, — a hymn that 
would surround the world in the same inter- 
cessory and jubilant strains. Of this says a 
writer, "Montgomery is, perhaps, the only 
Christian poet who ever had the high distinc- 
tion of being called upon by the Church of 
Christ to compose, and by the great Head of 



14 A CHKISTIAN AMBITION. 

the Church permitted to take part in singing, 
a strain that might literally be said to have 
surrounded the earth with one grand melody, 
carried on simultaneously with the entire ' cir- 
cuit of the sun/" This indeed was glory. 
But it was more glorious to be enabled to 
exclaim at last, in the fulness of his faith, — 

" My Father's house on high ! 
Home of my soul ! how near, 
At times, to faith's foreseeing eye 
Thy golden gates appear ! 

"I hear at morn and even, 

At noon and midnight hour, 
The choral harmonies of heaven 
Seraphic music pour." 

The ambitious Voltaire in his last days 
entered Paris in triumph. He was crowned in 
public, and hailed as the Sophocles and Homer 
of France. He thanked the admiring populace 
for the glory under which he declared he was 
about to expire. "What a wretched glory you 
have produced me !" he said to his atheistical 
friends a short time after, as he saw his ap- 
proaching end. How great is the contrast 



A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 15 

between the infidel hero of France and the 
poet-philanthropist of England at the close of 
a life of fame ! 

The poet Churchill was a most ambitious 
man. For distinction he threw off the clerical 
gown, turned his back upon the truths of 
Christianity, prostituted his genius and his pen, 
and became a leader of political faction. The 
Rosciad placed him at once in the front rank 
of the literary men of his age. It is said to 
have caused a greater sensation than any poem 
that had previously appeared in England. His 
literary career was brief but dazzling, and, al- 
though the censure of strong and able men 
somewhat abated its applause, it gratified his 
desire for renown. Self-exiled from religion, 
he freely gratified his passions, and died at the 
early age of thirty-three. But humanity owed 
him no debt, and his fame proved a mere cor- 
uscation, and left him but little save a black- 
ened name. Lord Byron seems to have visited 
the grave of Churchill, as among his miscel- 
laneous poems we find one entitled " Churchill's 



16 A CHKISTIAN AMBITION. 

Grave: a Fact literally rendered" It is one 
of the most artless of Byron's compositions, and 
could not have been written at a very long 
period after Churchill's death. The record is 
touching and melancholy. We quote the 
opening lines : — 

I stood beside the grave of him who blazed 

The comet of a season, and I saw 
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed 

With not the less of sorrow and of awe, 
On that neglected turf and quiet stone 
With names no clearer than the names unknown 

Which lay unread around it ; and I ask'd 
The gardener of the ground why it might be 

That for this plant strangers his memory task'd 
Through the thick deaths of half a century ? 
And thus he answered : 'Well, I do not know 
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so ; 
He died before my day of sextonship, 
And I had not the digging of this grave." 
And is this all ? I thought--' , 

What a requital for such a sacrifice, — for 
shortened life, a disgraceful character and a 
ruined soul ! Better that he had remained a 
humble curate. He then might have ennobled 
some immortal minds, and the world would have 



A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 17 

been better for his existence. Let the student 
who is feeding the flame of an inordinate ambi- 
tion learn a lesson from Churchill's grave. 

How different from the lines of Byron are 
those of Mrs. Browning on the Grave of 
Cowper! Notwithstanding his mind was 
darkened with settled melancholy, and that he 
entertained the idea that he was an outcast 
from the comforts of religion, Cowper steadily 
laboured for the happiness and religious eleva- 
tion of mankind, and made himself one of the 
world's benefactors. We quote the first four 
stanzas of Cowper' s Grave: — 

"It is a place where poets crown'd 

May feel the heart's decaying, — 
It is a place where happy saints 

May weep amid their praying : 
Yet let the grief and humbleness 

As low as silence languish ; 
Earth surely now may give her calm 

To whom she gave her anguish. 

"0 poets ! from a maniac's tongue 
Was pour'd the deathless singing ! 
Christians ! at your cross of hope 
A hopeless hand was clinging I 
2* 



18 A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 

men ! this man in brotherhood, 

Your weary paths beguiling, 
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace, 

And died while you were smiling. 

And now, what time ye all may read 
Through dimming tears his story, — 

How discord on the music fell, 
And darkness on the glory, — 

And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds 
And wandering lights departed, 

He wore no less a loving face, 

Because so broken-hearted. 

« 

He shall be strong to sanctify 

The poet's high vocation, 
And bow the meekest Christian down 

In meeker adoration; 
Nor ever shall he be in praise 

By wise or good forsaken ; 
Named softly as the household name 

Of one whom God hath taken !" 

Mere earthly glory soon loses its lustre and 
grows dim in the multitudinous events of time. 
It will do us no good in the charnel-house; 
we may not carry it with us to the unseen 
world ; and in the light of eternity how mean 
and trivial it appears ! It will matter but 
little whether a sprig of laurel or rosemary is 
cast into our graves ; but it will be all-important 



A CHKISTIAN AMBITION. 19 

whether or not the world has been made better 
by our existence. Like the breeze and sun- 
light of spring, that woo the grass and the 
flowers and prepare the way for the great 
millennial of the harvest, or as the blight that 
dwarfs and distorts the lovely and useful in 
nature, will be our influence. That influence 
will be irrevocable. How sad is the thought 
of leaving the world worse for our existence, — 
of having degraded those whom we might have 
ennobled, — of being remembered with disre- 
spect, when we might have left memories that 
would have brightened up like sudden angels 
in thoughtful and sorrowful hours, — of casting 
ourselves away from happiness here and from 
God forever, when we might have experienced 
the highest earthly joys, have helped fill heaven 
with angels, and have received thrones and 
crowns for our eternal reward! "Without 
religion we have no God to whom to look for 
direction, or to bless our endeavours in en- 
nobling our species. We are living for immor- 
tality and exerting immortal influences, and 



20 A CHRISTIAN AMBITION. 

without religion our best efforts will be com- 
paratively inconsequential. Young architect 
of the structure of life, let religion be your 
corner-stone, and, standing at last on the pin- 
nacle, you may catch at once the grateful 
plaudits of the world and the hallelujahs of 
the immortals ! 

" Years have been lost ! up, stir thee to redeem 
All that of life may yet be thine ; who knows 
How little ? Life is but a scanty ledge, 
Where the poor pilgrim walks suspended 'twixt 
Two fathomless abysses, hell and heaven. 
Oh, let him heed his footing, heed his side ! 
Dangers surround him momently ; and each 
May sweep him to the unknown, next which he stands, 
There to reside forever, blest or curst." 



II. 

YOUTH IN ITS RELATIONS TO A LONG 
AND SATISFACTORY LIFE. 



WESLEY— BURNS— JOHSSON— HARTLEY COLERIDGE— SHELLEY. 



21 



II. 



YOUTH IN ITS RELATIONS TO A 
LONG AND SATISFACTORY LIFE. 

WESLEY — BURNS — JOHNSON — HARTLEY 
COLERIDGE — SHELLEY. 

A BOUT a century ago there might have 
■^-^- been seen in England a venerable re- 
former, journeying from town to town, engaged 
in a fatherly oversight of the numerous churches 
he had been instrumental in gathering. More 
than eighty years had silvered his hair and 
furrowed his brow, — years of struggle and 
hardship ; for he had excited the displeasure 
of the irreligious, had faced riots and borne 
persecution, had journeyed from country to 
country, had preached more than forty thou- 
sand sermons, and had aroused the world to a 

23 



24 JOHN WESLEY. 

deeper conviction of the need of repentance 
and of a higher Christian life. He had heeded 
not hardship ; his mind was in uninterrupted 
communion with God ; and a sense of security, 
a sweet and abiding happiness, attended it. 
He could write in his Journal of the stormy 
scenes of the past, " Those days will return no 
more, and are, therefore, as though they had 
never been." 

"Pain, disappointment, sickness, strife 
Whate'er molests or troubles life, 
However grievous in its stay- 
It shakes the tenement of clay, 
When past, as nothing we esteem, 
And pain, like pleasure, is a dream." 

The storm of persecution had long since 
spent its fury, and he enjoyed the love of 
more than a hundred thousand disciples, and 
commanded the respect and veneration of the 
world. As he passed from chapel to chapel 
which had sprung up during his itinerancy, a 
shadow might have overcast his countenance ; 
for his old followers were dead, and cottage 
after cottage reminded him of those whose 



JOHX WESLEY. 25 

prayers and praises were wont to mingle with 
his, but who now slept with their fathers. 
Everywhere he passed the graves of the friends 
of his early years. Three generations of men 
had felt the force of his eloquence. After 
wandering among the graves in his native 
village, he says, "I felt the truth that 'One 
generation goeth, and another cometh.' See 
how the earth drops its inhabitants, as the 
tree drops its leaves." But the vigour of his 
youth remained; he made long and frequent 
journeys, preached often, wrote much. He 
visited Holland twice after he became an 
octogenarian, looking after the spiritual in- 
terests of his followers. Upon completing 
his eighty-second year, he says, " Is any 
thing too hard for God? It is now eleven 
years since I have felt any such thing as 
weariness. Many times I speak till my voice 
fails and I can speak no longer ; frequently 
I walk till my strength fails and I can walk 
no farther : yet even then I feel no sensation 
of weariness, but am perfectly easy, from head 



26 JOHN WESLEY. 

to foot." A year later he says, " I am a won- 
der to myself. I am never tired (such is the 
goodness of God) either with writing, preach- 
ing, or travelling." At length he became a 
valetudinarian, but without suffering: his 
physical powers, free from the poison of vice, 
were exempt from pain, but gradually de- 
cayed. " I am an old man now," he wrote, in 
his eighty-seventh year, " decayed from head 
to foot. My eyes are dim; my right hand 
shakes much ; my mouth is hot and dry every 
morning; I have a lingering fever almost 
every day; my motion is weak and slow. 
However, blessed be God ! I do not slack my 
labours : I can preach and write still." Many 
love to treasure up the remarkable testimonies 
of closing life ; few such testimonies are sweeter 
than his : — " Eighty-seven years have I so- 
iourned on this earth, endeavouring: to do 
good." Slowly, slowly, lower, lower, sunk 
the sun of life in its setting ; no cloud or haze 
obscured its departing glory ; it fell at last, but 
* "left a track of glory in the skies." 



JOHN WESLEY. 27 

The physical powers of the venerable father 
were exhausted, and 

" The weary springs of life at last stood still." 

That man was John Wesley, — great as a re- 
former, great as an ecclesiastic, but greater yet 
as one who had faithfully used the powers 
given him by God. 

Such a close of life, a serene old age, blessed 
with the recollection of eminent usefulness, is 
a favourite day-dream of the young, and one 
that may be realized. God has promised length 
of days and peace to those who keep his com- 
mandments ; and physical vigour, mental health, 
a hale manhood and a long life are the natural 
results of pious opinions and practices. Reli- 
gion is the guardian of health, as well as the 
hope of the soul : 

"Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives, 
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives, 
Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even, 
And opens in each breast a little heaven.'' 

"It was a principle among the ancients," 
says Dr. Johnson, — whose piety was a means 



28 JOHN WESLEY. 

of prolonging his life to a ripe old age, and of 
saving him from hereditary insanity, — "that 
acute diseases are from heaven, and chronic 
from ourselves : the dart of death, indeed, falls 
from heaven, but we poison it by our own mis- 
conduct: to die is the fate of man, but to 
die with lingering anguish is generally his 
folly." 

" The colour of our whole life," says Cowper, 
" is generally such as the three or four first 
years in which we are our own masters make 
it." Whatever truth there may be in this re- 
mark, a virtuous youth must be the foundation 
of a long and happy life 

I. A young man must possess harmony of 
character to insure a satisfactory life. Though 
lie be honest, generous and piously inclined,* 
if he is intemperate, he is degraded in his own 
estimation and in that of the world. Though 
lie possess versatile talents and unexception- 
able morals, if he lack energy, he will accom- 
plish nothing. Though he have energy and 
integrity, if he is a slave to a rash and capri- 



JOHN WESLEY. 29 

cious temper, his life, graced though it may 
be with the monuments of his industry, will 
be interspersed with ruins; men will recoil 
from him, and he will be unhappy. And 
though he be moral, amiable and energetic, 
if he lack piety and the hopes of a better life, 
an unrest will remain. It will profit him 
nothing if he fulfils his purpose in life and 
loses his soul. 

We behold an inferior class of men, possess- 
ing ability, refinement and many excellences, 
but victims of temptation. They are thrown 
off their guard, are drawn into error ; they in- 
dulge cautiously at first, but vice soon masters 
their reason, enchains their will, and enthrones 
itself in the soul. They are conscious of the 
right, without the power to pursue it. Their 
will is infected. They at length become in- 
different to the opinions of the world, and 
their downward course is rapid. They die, 
their vices having robbed them of half their 
days. They go to tearless graves, and are for- 
gotten. The years roll on, — years of whose 

3* 



30 JOHN WESLEY. 

pleasures they might have partaken, — years in 
which they might have been conspicuous actors, 
— years that might have encircled their brow 
with the silver crown of age and have given 
them the benediction of a lamented death and 
an honoured grave, 

The early years of the marvellous old man 
whose declining life we have pictured were not 
only unblemished by vice, but were marked by 
pious opinions and by religious habits strict 
in the extreme. His home was a garden of 
piety ; and when he became a student at Ox- 
ford his principles were settled. He lived 
abstemiously, visited the erring and the un- 
fortunate, and refused to comply with the 
fashions of the times, that he might give the 
more to the poor. Ridicule fell powerless be- 
fore his iron purpose to shape his life to the 
will of God. " I resolved," he- writes, on one 
occasion, " to have no companions by chance, 
but by choice, and to choose those only who 
would help me on my way to heaven." He 
was inflexible in principle; and his brother 



EOBEET BUENS. 31 

once remarked that he believed no one could 
alter his mind but Him that made it. He 
wasted no time, indulged in no amusements. 
His mother was a learned and an eminently 
pious woman, and he was accustomed to con- 
sult her concerning nice points of morals. 
" Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlaw- 
fulness of pleasure," she wrote to him, on one 
occasion, " take this rule : Whatever weakens 
your reason, impairs the tenderness of your 
conscience, obscures your sense of God, or 
takes off the relish of spiritual things, — in 
short, whatever increases the strength and 
authority of your body over your mind, — that 
thing is sin to you, however innocent it may 
be in itself." 

Let us glance at the life of the well-known 
domestic poet, Robert Burns. 

"Allen (Lord Holland's Allen, — the best- 
informed and one of the ablest men I know, — 
a devourer of books, and an observer of men) 
has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpub- 
lished and never-to-be-published letters. . . 



32 ROBERT BURNS. 

What an antithetical mind ! Tenderness, 
roughness, delicacy, coarseness, sentiment, sen- 
suality, soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity, 
all mixed up in one compound of inspired 
clay." Thus, in his journal, wrote Lord 
Byron of Burns. What was the result of 
this want of moral symmetry ? Stung to the 
quick by the exposure of a grave error, he 
fled to Edinburgh, where his poetical fame 
had preceded him, and there received a most 
flattering reception from savans. He was 
made welcome to the gayest and most fashion- 
able society; female grace and beauty threw 
around him their charms ; and ■ even Dr. 
Blair and the Earl of Glencairn were among 
his admirers and patrons. But, while thus 
honoured, he gave loose reins to his perverse 
inclinations, and was drawn into the too con- 
genial ripple of dissolute society. Dissipa- 
tion fastened itself upon his character, and, 
against the protest of his conscience and his 
better judgment, held him in bondage during 
the rest of his life. He lamented his lapses 



ROBERT BURNS. 33 

and struggled against temptation, but lacked 
the moral energy to recover himself. The fol- 
lowing- poem, written in prospect of death, 
and perhaps the most melancholy poem that 
Burns ever wrote, shows how pitiable was his 
moral situation : — 

"Fain would I say, ' Forgive my foul offence, 
Fain promise never more to disobey; 

But, should my Author health again dispense, 
Again I might desert fair virtue's way 
Again in folly's paths might go astray, 

Again exalt the brute and sink the man. 

Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 

Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, 

Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran ? 

" thou, great Governor of all below, 

If I may dare a lifted eye to thee, 
Thy nod can bid the tempest cease to blow, 

Or still the raging of an angry sea ; 

With that controlling power assist e'en me 
These headlong, furious passions to confine, 

For all unfit I feel my power to be 
To rule their current in the allowed line : 
Oh, aid me with thy strength, Omnipotence Divine!" 

The close of his life was sad. He returned 
from a dinner at a tavern, one bitter cold 
night, intoxicated; his health was poor, and 



34 ROBERT BURNS. 

the exposure fastened disease incurably upon 
him. He rallied, but grew worse again, and 
died in apparent unconcern respecting his 
future state. 

Young reader, can you believe it possible 
that these pleasant years may be bearing you 
to an end like this ? — that the time will come 
when some evil propensity will mock at your 
reason, lead captive your will, and seal your 
fate for sorrow, — sorrow here, sorrow here- 
after ; when death will seem fearful, and life, 
degrading you ever lower, will seem, perhaps, 
more fearful than death ; when you shall look 
hopelessly up to heaven and beseech the Omni- 
potent to save you from yourself; when "the 
Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and 
failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and thy 
life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou 
shalt fear day and night, and shalt have no 
assurance of thy life : in the morning thou shalt 
say, Would God it were even ! and at even thou 
shalt say, Would God it were morning! for 
the fear of thy heart wherewith thou shalt 



EMPLOYMENT. 35 

fear, and the sight of thy eyes wherewith thou 
shalt see" ? No, no : these days of innocence 
conceal the power of the passions and the 
temptations of the world. No one dreams of 
spiritual orphanage in youth, — of a time when 
manhood shall be lost, the soul self-im- 
prisoned, and life become a dismal heritage of 
physical torture and of low, grovelling, hope- 
less, suicidal thoughts. 

" The race of life becomes a hopeless flight 
To those who walk in darkness : on the sea 
The boldest steer but where their ports invite ; 
But there are wanderers o'er eternity 
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er 
shall be." 

II. Energy, activity, useful employment, 
must accompany a harmonious character. It 
is the disuse and not the use of the faculties, 
the rust and not the friction of life, that 
enervates the body and unsettles the mind. 
A wholesome use of the powers of the mind 
and body answers the purpose of life and gives 
moral and physical stamina. "How. is this," 
asks Wesley in old age, " that I find just the 



36 EMPLOYMENT. 

same strength as I did thirty years ago?— that 
my sight is considerably better now and my 
nerves firmer than they were then? — that I 
have none of the infirmities of old age, and 
have lost several I had in my youth? The 
grand cause is the good pleasure of God, who 
does whatsoever pleaseth him. The chief 
means are my constantly rising at four o'clock 
for about fifty years ; my generally preaching 
at five in the morning, — one of the most 
healthy exercises in the world ; my never tra- 
velling less, by sea or land, than four thou- 
sand five hundred miles a year." 

Employment is a most efficient remedy 
against temptation. It is men of leisure, and 
not hard-working scholars, farmers or mechan- 
ics, that make wrecks of their existence. It is 
the gay saloon, and not the workshop, that 
stops the machinery of life. Men whose 
thoughts are constantly directed to some noble 
end never dabble in the follies and vices of life ; 
time is too precious, their sense of responsibility 
too keen. 



HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 37 

"My indolence since my last reception of 
the sacrament," once wrote Dr. Johnson, " has 
sunk into grosser sluggishness, and my dissipa- 
tion spread into wilder negligence. My 
thoughts have been clouded "with sensuality, 
and, except that from the beginning of this 
year I have, in some measure, forborne excess 
in strong drink, my appetites have predominated 
over my reason. A kind of strange oblivion 
has overspread me, so that I know not what 
has become of the last year, and perceive that 
incidents and intelligence pass over me without 
leaving any impression." 

He then solemnly adds, — v' 

"This is not the life to which 
heaven is promised." 

Hartley Coleridge, the son of the great poet, 
and the author of some excellent sonnets, was 
a gifted and kind-hearted man. His conversa- 
tional talent was unusual, — rich in scholarship, 
wit, whim, fancy; and his parentage gave him 
prominence in literary circles. He numbered 
among his friends Southey, Wordsworth and 



38 COLERIDGE. 

Christopher North. But, with all these advan- 
tages, he possessed no force of character, no 
steady purpose, but became intemperate; and 
while he was familiar with some of the 
strongest and most notable men of his times, 
he made intimate friends of common ale-house 
idlers, and wasted his time and talents with 
them at the inn. He was left much to himself 
in youth, and the idle and roving habits he 
then formed followed him through life. He 
struggled hard to gain a fellowship at Oriel 
College, Oxford ; he lived soberly and studied 
well for more than eleven months of his pro- 
bationary year, when some dissolute friends 
from London visited him, made him a truant, 
and got him intoxicated, and he was conse- 
quently proscribed. His subsequent life was 
aimless. He was prodigal of time, and was 
accustomed to seek in dissolute habits and 
garrulous society a refuge from the tedium of 
life. He seems to have become indifferent to 
the opinions of others ; he spent his annuity at 
his pleasure, and often went hungry and was 



COLERIDGE. 39 

obliged to beg the loan of a sixpence. His 
death was untimely. He attempted to return 
from a dinner-party, in a state of intoxication, 
on a cold winter's night. He was unable to 
reach home until morning, evidently becoming 
unconscious on the way. The exposure 
brought on sickness. He rallied, carelessly ex- 
posed himself, relapsed, and died. 

" It was sweet as well as sorrowful/' says 
Miss Martineau, " to see how he was mourned.. 
Everybody, from his old landlady, who cared 
for him like a mother, to the infant-school- 
children, missed Hartley Coleridge. I went to 
his funeral at Grasmere. The rapid Eotha 
rippled and dashed over the stones beside the 
church-yard; the yews rose dark from the 
faded grass- of the graves, and in mighty con- 
trast to both, Helvellyn stood, in wintry 
silence, and sheeted with spotless snow. 
Among the mourners Wordsworth was con- 
spicuous, w T ith his white hair and patriarchal 
aspect. He had no cause for painful emotions 
on his own account ; for he had been a faithful 



40 EDGAR A. POE. 

friend to the doomed victim who was now 
beyond the reach of his tempters. While there 
was any hope that stern remonstrance might 
rouse the feeble will and strengthen the suffer- 
ing conscience to relieve itself, such remon- 
strance was pressed ; and when the case was 
past hope, Wordsworth's door was ever open 
to his old friend's son."* 

* We need not go abroad to find gifted men whose lives 
are admonitory. 

A clergyman thus pens the death-bed scene of one who 
ranks among the most eminent poets of our country: — 

"On a chilly and wet November evening I received a 
note stating that a man answering to the name of Edgar 
Allen Poe, who claimed to know me, was at a drinking- 
saloon in Lombard Street, in Baltimore, in a state of deep 
intoxication and great destitution. T repaired imme- 
diately to the spot. It was an election-day. When I 
entered the bar-room of the house, I instantly recognized 
the face of one whom I had often seen and knew well, 
although it wore an aspect of vacant stupidity that made 
me shudder. The intellectual flash of his eye had van- 
ished, or rather had been quenched in the bowl, but the 
broad capacious forehead of the author of ' The Raven,' as 
you have appropriately designated him, was still there,— 
with width in the region of ideality such as few men ever 
possessed. * * * * He was so utterly 
stupefied with liquor that I thought it best not to seek 
recognition or conversation, especially as he was sur- 



EDGAR A. POE. 41 

III. A life to be long and happy must be 
overruled and solaced by religion. 

To live at peace with God, with our own 
conscience, with all mankind, — to supplicate 

rounded by a crowd of gentlemen actuated by idle 
curiosity rather than sympathy. I immediately ordered 
a room for him where he could be comfortable until I got 
word to his relatives, — for there were several in Balti- 
more. Just at that moment one or two of the persons re- 
ferred to, getting information, arrived at the spot. They 
declined to take private care of him, for the reason that 
he had been very abusive and ungrateful on all occasions- 
when drunk, and advised that he be sent to an hospital. 
He was accordingly placed in a coach and conveyed to 
the Washington College Hospital, and put under the care 
of a competent and attentive resident physician of that 
institution. So insensible was he, that we had to carry 
him to a carriage as if a corpse. The muscles of articu- 
lation seemed paralyzed to speechlessness, and mere in- 
coherent mutterings were all that were heard. 

" He died in the hospital after some three or four days, 
during which time he enjoyed only occasional and fitful 
seasons of consciousness. His disease, as will have been 
anticipated, was mania apotu, — a disease whose finale is 
always fearful in its maniacal manifestations. In one of 
his more lucid moments, when asked by the physician 
whether he would like to see his friends, he exclaimed, 
1 Friends ! My best friend would be he who would take 
a pistol and blow m^ brains out, and thus relieve me of 
my agony.' These were among his last words." 

4* 



42 SHELLEY. 

our daily blessings, and to feel that Christ 
abides with us, — that, come life or death or any 
event, we are safe in His hands who disposes 
all things, — that, though the earth dissolve ancl 
the heavens flee away, we have a Deliverer, — 
that God will overrule our lives to our good 
and his glory, — to reflect, in each disappoint- 
ment and sorrow, that we are treading the 
verge of a better and happier life, — this is satis- 
faction, perfect peace, — 

" The calm, deep joy of a confiding thought;" 

and this alone. 

Says Wesley, after reading, in early life, 
Kempis's " Imitation of Christ," " Instantly 
I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, — 
all my thoughts and words and actions, — being 
thoroughly convinced there was no medium." 
Here was something fundamental. 

A few years after the death of Wesley, there 
appeared at Oxford a student with a brilliant 
intellect and a consuming • ambition, who 
aspired to be a reformer. The thought of 



SHELLEY. 43 

eminent usefulness filled his chivalrous imagi- 
nation, and pictured the future as a long succes- 
sion of happy years, solaced by tributes of 
affection and brilliant with the trophies of 
fame. But piety had taken no root in his soul, 
and his aspirations turned not towards God, but 
towards philosophy and distinction. He read 
Hume ; — there was something bold in standing 
aloof from Christianity and treating it as 
trivial : — he imbibed the poison of the great 
historian, and aspired to reform the world ; 
not after the pattern of Christ 'or the law of 
God, but after the wild schemes of his truant 
imagination. . He dreamed, speculated, and 
wrote a pamphlet on the " Necessity of 
Atheism/' He sent it boldly to the heads of 
the colleges, and was expelled from the 
university. He married, and, still bent on 
reform, he went to Ireland, <c the theatre," as 
he expressed it, "the widest and fairest for the 
operations of the determined friends of religious 
and political freedom." But his schemes were 
too impractical to command respect, and he 



44 SHELLEY. 

returned a baffled and disappointed man. He 
deserted his young wife, and sought the com- 
panionship of a more brilliant and gifted lady. 
His wife ended her unhappy life by suicide, 
and he married the guilty woman of his choice. 
He became a socialist, and assailed the institu- 
tion of marriage, and propagated the doctrine 
that love and not wedlock should govern the 
social and domestic relations of life. He be- 
came a poet, and published an elaborate poem, 
a sublime metrical essay on reform. But the 
plaudits of fame fell on a heavy heart. He 
left England and visited the grand old cities 
of the continent. Arrived at Naples, sick in 
body and sick at heart, the young reformer 
thus speaks of his blighted hopes and his 
weary, dreary inner life : — 

"Alas ! I have not hope nor health, 
Nor peace within, nor calm around, 

Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 
The sage in meditation found, 
And walk'd with inward glory crown' d, — 

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
Others I see whom these surround : 



SHELLEY. 45 

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure. 
To me that cup has been dealt in another 
measure." 

"I could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne and yet must bear, 
• Till sleep, like death, might steal on me. 
And I might feel, in the warm air, 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony." 

He wandered with his family amid the 
magnificent ruins of ancient Italy , — to Rome, 
to Paestuin, to Pompeii, to Herculaneum, to 
Baiae, and again to the city of the Caesars. 
Rome's storied past and fading glory kindled 
all the romance of his nature ; and, amid scenes 
historic with a thousand events and with varied 
and antithetical destinies, his genius blazed 
forth in a phoenix-like song. The shadows of 
life thickened round him; the age of thirty 
found him gray, withered and old, with a fame 
forever linked to reproach. 

Speaking of the censure of the world, he 

writes to his wife, "When I hear of such 

t 
things, my patience and my philosophy are put 



46 SHELLEY. 

to a severe proof, while I refrain from seeking 
some obscure place, where the countenance of 
man may never meet me more. * * * * 
Imagine my despair of good ; imagine how it 
is impossible that one of so weak and sensitive 
a nature as mine can further run the gauntlet 
through the hellish society of man." 

Again : " My greatest comfort would be 
utterly to desert all human society. I would 
retire with you and our children to a solitary 
island in the sea, would build a boat, and shut 
upon my retreat the floodgates of the world. 
I would read no reviews ; I would talk with 
no authors. If I dared trust my imagination, 
it would tell me there are one or two chosen 
companions besides yourself w T hom I should 
desire. But to this I w r ould not listen. Where 
two or three are gathered together, the devil 
is among them." A storm at sea ended the 
drama-like life of this unhappy man— Shelley. 

There is a marked difference between the 
lives of the author of " Prometheus Unbound" 
and of the itinerant preacher of Kingswood 
and of Bristol. 



III. 

A SUCCESSFUL LIFE WITHIN THE 
REACH OF ALL. 



EMINENT MEN WHO HAVE WED EARLY— WHO HAVE OVERCOME OBSTA- 
CLES—ILLUSTRATIONS FROM BURTON— MRS. E. C. JUDSON— 
PROF. HEINE. 



47 



Ill, 



A SUCCESSFUL LIFE WITHIN • 
THE REACH OF ALL. 

EMINENT MEN WHO HAVE DIED EARLY — 
WHO HAVE OVERCOME OBSTACLES — ILLUS- 
TRATIONS FROM BURTON — MRS. E. C. JUD- 
SON — PROF. HEYNE. 

T) ESPECT and love, competence and posi- 
-*-^ tion, eminent usefulness and a name 
perpetuated in books, in oratory and marble, 
are the day-dreams that impart a peculiar 
romance to the opening period of life. Does 
the youth read of statesmen ? — he beholds him- 
self amid pillars and arches on which art has 
lavished her splendours, swaying senates by 
the richness and the irresistible power of his 

5 49 



50 A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 

eloquence. Of authors and poets ? — the blaze 
of his genius illuminates the world and casts a 
weird and romantic glory on the ages. Of 
heroes? — he beholds himself amid glittering 
.pageants and surrounded by applauding mul- 
titudes, and holding a place forever among 
tho names that are linked to national destinies. 
Of reformers ? — his whole soul kindles at the 
thought of exalted usefulness : he elevates 
mankind ; he leads men to the foot of the cross 
and to the everlasting glories of the redeemed. - 
All dream; few realize their anticipations. 
All have thought, — 

"Oh for some busy circumstance, at once 
To take the cloud from off our starry thoughts, 
And let their glory constellate the dark !" 

few give themselves up to the labour that pro- 
duces results. 

A successful life depends upon powers that 
all may exercise, — energy and perseverance. 
It is within the reach of all. " The hand of 
the diligent," says the proverb, " shall rule." 
Not more surely does the crop reward the 



A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 51 

labour of the husbandman, than success the 
active, persevering efforts of the candidate for 
an honourable place and name. Wealth and 
hereditary honours cannot impart scholarship, 
nor link names with the great discoveries of 
science, nor make men pre-eminent in the 
halls of state or in the studies of art. 

"Destiny is not 
About thee, but within : thyself must make 
Thyself; the agonizing throes of thought, — 
These bring forth glory, bring forth destiny. " 

All that is great and praiseworthy comes of 
action. Dreams and aspirations, of themselves, 
cannot make successful men. A day of action 
will accomplish more than a year of dreaming. 
" For nie," says Cicero, " ne otium quidem un- 
quam otiosum" — " even my leisure hours have 
their occupation." 

How much may be accomplished by an 
active life may be estimated by what famous 
men have done in a brief period and under 
the most adverse circumstances. Henry Kirke 
White died at the age of twenty-one, and Chat- 



52 A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 

terton still earlier. Beaumont died at twenty- 
nine; George Dana Boardman at thirty; 
Henry Watson Fox at thirty-one ; Sir Philip 
Sidney at thirty-two; Otway at thirty-four; 
Mozart at thirty-five; Byron, Collins, and 
James Gregory at thirty-six ; Burns and Ra- 
phael at thirty-seven; Pascal and Torricelli 
at thirty-nine. Cromwell was forty years old 
when he entered the army. Cowper was fifty 
when he commenced his literary career. Boe- 
thius's " Consolations of Philosojphy" was writ- 
ten while the author was under sentence of 
death. Bunyan wrote his great allegory during 
imprisonment ; and the Spanish classical work, 
" Don Quixote," was written under the same 
disadvantage. Homer, Milton, Blacklock, 
Anna Williams, and Prescott the historian, 
were blind. Alexander Cruden, the author 
of the " Concordance of the Old and New Tes- 
taments," commenced the work while a book- 
seller, and revised and completed it during 
insanity. Herschel self-educated himself in 
astronomy while teaching music. Sebastian 



A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 53 

Castalio was obliged to work in the fields, and 
could only devote the morning hours to study. 
Henry Kirke White was obliged to earn his 
livelihood while a boy, but devoted the rem- 
nant of his time most assiduously to study, 
allowing himself but little sleep. He ac- 
quainted himself with the classical and modern 
languages, with the sciences, with music and 
drawing, with various literary knowledge, and 
entered the university with high honour, and 
won an imperishable name as a poet, and yet 
died at the early age we have recorded. Men 
frequently place themselves in high positions 
by their activity during a period compara- 
tively brief. Many accomplish more during 
a single decade than in all their subsequent 
life. 

The essentials to success place all men on an 
equal footing. The rich cannot become emi- 
nent for usefulness w^hile living at ease; the 
gifted cannot become known to the world while 
avoiding exertion. If wealth is an auxiliary 
to eminence, poverty is a powerful incentive. 

5* 



54 A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 

If unusual gifts facilitate high attainments, 
moderate talents promote exertion. Men of 
moderate abilities have frequently made them- 
selves familiar to the world; and civilization 
and progress are the work of men born to 
want and inured to hardship. Homer, Luther, 
Ferguson, Franklin, Burns, Cook and Colum- 
bus all knew the want of a wholesome suste- 
nance. i£sop was a slave, and Bunyan a poor 
tinker. The father of Haydn was a wheel- 
wright and sexton, and his mother a servant. 
Benvenuto Cellini, Hogarth, Ramsay, Gay 
and Linnseus were apprentices. The fathers 
of Akenside and Kirke White were butchers. 
The father of Shakspeare was very illiterate. 
Sir Richard Arkwright was the youngest of 
thirteen children, and was bred to the pro- 
fession of a barber. Robert Bloomfield was a 
poor orphan, and put out to service to a farmer, 
and subsequently to his brother, a shoemaker. 
John and Charles Wesley were the sons of a 
poor village vicar, whose income afforded but 
a scanty support to his numerous family. 



A SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 55 

Burton, in his " Anatomy of "Melancholy," 
gives some interesting illustrations of the dis- 
advantages against which many remarkable 
men in ancient times had to contend. " Han- 
nibal had but one eye ; Appius Claudius, Timo- 
leon, blind ; as were Muleasse King of Tunis, 
John King of Bohemia, and Tiresias the pro- 
phet. . . . Homer was blind; yet who, saith 
Tully, made more accurate, lively or better 
descriptions with both his eyes ? Democritus 
was blind ; yet, as Laertius writes of him, he 
saw more than all Greece beside. . . . iEsop 
was crooked, Socrates purblind, Democritus 
withered, Seneca lean and harsh, ugly to be- 
hold ; yet show me so many flourishing wits, 
such divine spirits. Horace, a little, bleared- 
eyed, contemptible fellow ; yet who so senten- 
tious and wise ? Marcilius Ficinus, Faber 
Stapulensis, a couple of dwarfs; Melancthon, 
a short, hard-favoured man; yet of incom- 
parable parts all three. Galba the emperor 
was crook-backed ; Epictetus, lame ; the great 
Alexander, a little man of stature ; Augustus 



56 MES. JUDSON. 

Caesar, of the same pitch ; Agesilaus, despi- 
cabili forma; Boccharis, a most deformed 
prince as ever Egypt had, yet, as Diodorus 
Siculus records of him, in wisdom and know- 
ledge far beyond his predecessors/' 

Some thirty-five years ago there lived in the 
rural districts of New York a little girl of a 
slender constitution, but of a strong spirit and 
of lofty aspirations. Her parents were barely 
able to provide a sustenance, and she was sent 
to work in the factory. She speaks of her 
recollections of " noise and filth, bleeding hands 
and sore feet, and a very sad heart." She 
aspired to be an author and a missionary, and 
to raise her parents to competence. What a 
day-dream for a slender little factory-girl ! 
She employed her leisure in reading and study, 
and entered the academy. "On Monday 
morning," she says, " I used to arise at two 
o'clock, and do the washing for the family and 
boarders. Before nine on Thursday evening 
I did the ironing ; and Saturday, because there 
was but half a day of school, we made baking- 



MKS. JTTDSON. 57 

clay. I also took sewing of a mantua-maker 
close by, and so continued to make good the 
time consumed in school. My classmates had 
spent all their lives in school, and they now 
had plenty of leisure for study. They were 
also, all but one, older than myself, and I 
therefore found it a difficult task to keep up 
with them without robbing my sleeping hours. 
I seldom got any rest till one or two o'clock, 
and then I read French and solved mathemat- 
ical problems in my sleep." She obtained an 
education, and at the age of fifteen commenced 
teaching, and soon won an excellent local 
reputation as a teacher. She continued to cul- 
tivate her mind, and acquainted herself ex- 
tensively with literature. At about twenty- 
one, she commenced writing for the local press. 
Her poems were marked by strength, beauty 
and pathos, and attracted attention. She at 
length accepted a place as teacher in the Utica 
Female Seminary, and employed her leisure in 
writing books for children. These compositions 
developed her genius, and she ventured before 



58 MRS. JUDSON. 

the public as a writer for periodical literature, 
and rose rapidly to fame. For nearly two 
years she was the most conspicuous writer in 
the country ; and there was no society, however 
affluent, cultivated or honoured, to whom her 
company was not interesting. " My life," she 
writes to an intimate friend, " has been full of 
changes. Without one of my own kindred to 
assist me, I have struggled with almost every 
kind of difficulty up to the present moment. 
Even you cannot dream of half that I have 
borne. Heaven knows, enough to make me 
humble. Within the last year, — one short 
year, — I have gained for myself a position 
which others have been all their lives in attain- 
ing, and I have a right to be proud of it. You 
may tell me it is a small thing to be a maga- 
zine-writer. So it is. But it is not a small 
thing for a woman, thrown upon her own re- 
sources, and standing entirely alone, to be able 
to command respect from everybody, rising by 
her own individual efforts above the accidents 
of fortune." She helped her parents in pro- 



PROF. HEYNE. 59 

viding for themselves a comfortable home, and 
married a most distinguished missionary, and 
consecrated her life to the missionary service, 
thus realizing her youthful day-dreams. It is, 
perhaps, needless to mention the name, Mrs. 
Emily Chubbuck Judson. 

Professor Heyne of Gottingen was a most 
eminent classical writer and' lecturer, and one 
of the most profound scholars of his age. His 
father was a poor weaver. " Want," he says, 
" was the companion of my childhood. I well 
remember the painful impressions made on my 
mind by witnessing the distress of my mother 
when without food for her children. How 
often have I seen her, on a Saturday evening, 
weeping and wringing her hands, as she re- 
turned home from an unsuccessful effort to sell 
the goods which the daily and nightly toil of 
my father had manufactured." He was early 
sent to school, and discovered remarkable abili- 
ties ; and, before he was eleven years of age, he 
defrayed a part of his tuition by teaching the 
daughter of a wealthy neighbour to read and 



80 PROF. HEYNE. 

write. His god-father afforded ' him some 
assistance, but so limited were his circumstances 
at the seminary of Chemnitz, that he was un- 
able to purchase the necessary books, and was 
often obliged to copy his lessons from those of 
his companions. He entered the University 
at Leipsic, having received the promise of 
assistance. The aid was for a time withheld, 
and he was destitute of books, and would have 
been destitute of food had it not been for the 
compassion of a maid-servant of the house in 
which he lodged. He became so absorbed in 
his studies at the university that, for six 
months, he allowed, himself but two nights' 
sleep in a week. In the midst of great pecu- 
niary distress, he was offered a place as tutor 
in a family at Magdeburg. The appointment 
would remove him from the scene of his 

4 

studies ; and he refused it, resolving to suffer 
almost any thing rather than not complete his 
education. He was subsequently offered a like 
situation in the university town. He accepted 
this, but continued his studies with so much 



PKOF. HEYNE. 61 

assiduity as to bring on a dangerous illness, 
during which he was reduced again to the most 
extreme poverty. He relieved his wants by 
publishing some scholarly works he had 
written. He obtained a finished education, 
but lived for many years in comparative 
obscurity, and subject to changing fortunes. 
His classical writings at last attracted the atten- 
tion of scholars, and he was successfully nomi- 
nated to the Hanoverian minister for the 
Professorship of Eloquence in the University 
of Gottingen. His subsequent career was one 
of influence, emolument and celebrity.* 

* The last two examples are not to be imitated in one 
respect, — that of devoting the night to study. The early 
death of Kirke White illustrates the melancholy results 
of such a course. But they show the self-denial and 
struggles by which talent is developed and men of posi- 
tion are made. 

" The slow, 
Still process of the rain, distilling down 
The great sweat of the sea, is never seen 
In the consummate spectacle flash'd forth, 
A snow-hued arch, upon the clouds of heaven : 
So never sees the world those energies, 
Strong effort, and long patience, which have stirr'd 
In low obscurity, and slowly heaved 
Its darkness up, till sudden glory springs 
Forth from it, arching like a perfect rainbow." 
6 



62 USELESS LIVES. 

The world is full of disappointed men. 
They all possessed high aspirations in youth, 
but their energy was impulsive, and accom- 
plished nothing ; or they allowed frivolities to 
ensnare them, and to keep out of sight the 
great purposes of life. Reader, do you aspire 
to honour, competence and influence? Act! — 
else your glittering day-dreams will be the 
nearest approach to the objects of your desire. 
Act ! — or you may write your name in water 
and behold the emblem of your destiny. 
Yield to amusement, show, fashion, — idle in 
bar- and counting-rooms, — waste your abilities 
and energies in the low animal delights of the 
bowl, — and your narcotics will deaden your 
conscience and sensibilities, and cast you upon 
a pitiless world, when repentance is too late. 
Act for humanity! Li vino; for ends that 
terminate in yourself is to write yourself a 
cipher; the world would be as well without 
your existence. Act for Christ ! Be a sun, 
and not a satellite ; surround yourself with a 
halo of moral glory ; sublimate your nature to 



THE TRUE LIFE. 63 

angelic heights! Pray! You need not be 
subject to an uncertain destiny. " Commit thy 
way unto the Lord ; trust also in him, and he 
shall bring it to pass."* 

* " Thus would I double my life's fading space, 
For he that runs it well twice runs his race. 

And in this true delight, — 
These unbought sports, — that happy state, — 
l»,would not fear nor wish my fate, 

But boldly say, each night, 
To-morrow let my sun his beams display, 
Or in clouds hide them ; I have lived to-day. " 

Cowley (at the age of thirteen). 



IV. 
NATURE'S NOBLEMEN. 



BARON CUYIER — GEORGE STEPHENSON— WILLIAM C08BETT— THE 
BUNHItt FIELDS. 



65 



IV. 

NATURE'S NOBLEMEN. 

" Think ye the lofty foreheads of the world, 
That gleam like full moons through the night of time, 
Holding their calm, big splendour steadily, 
Forever at the toss of history, — 
Think ye they rush'd up with a suddenness 
Of rockets sportively shot into heaven, 
And flared to their immortal places there?" 

BABON CUVIER — GEORGE STEPHENSON — WIL- 
LIAM COBBETT — THE BUNHILL FIELDS. 

"INTELLIGENCE and an honest purpose 
■*■ are essential to success. Men of intelligence 
are not only pre-eminent in the common affairs 
of life, and in art, science and literature, but 
they sway the currents of popular thought and 
feeling, thus shaping the policies of govern- 
ments and the destinies of nations, and creating 

67 



68 nature's noblemen. 

those moral revolutions that hasten the uni- 
versal triumph of civilization and of the gospel 
of Christ. Well-directed intelligence will live, 
and is a title to a higher and more enduring 
nobility than that which the accidents of birth 
or the caprices of royalty confer. The name 
of Newton is coexistent with the laws that 
govern the universe, and the names of Galileo 
and Herschel with the stars of heaven ; and no 
prince or king has so enduring a memorial. 
The names and the works of the cultivated men 
of antiquity remain, while the potentates of 
their times are but vaguely known, and the 
haughty men who figured in the courts of those 
potentates are forgotten. Kepler was poor, but 
declared that he would rather be the author of 
the works he had written than to possess the 
duchy of Saxony. The declaration was wise 
and noble. 

Superior intelligence is the result of hard 
study and heroic self-denial ; and stability of 
purpose requires exertion. " Excellence/ 5 Sir 
Joshua Reynolds used to say of painting, " is 



TRUE GREATNESS. 6& 

never granted to a man but as a reward of 
labour." " Those who would excel," he de- 
clared, " must go to their work, willing or un- 
willing, and will find it no play, but, on the 
contrary, very hard labour." True greatness 
is born of the agony of thought, after years of 
privation, toil and unrest, and confronts the 
world at last, eloquent and commanding, and 
exerts an influence that the wealthy and titled- 
may covet in vain. 

" Go mummify 
Thy name within that architectural pile 
Which others' intellect has builded ; none, — 
For all the hieroglyphs of glory, — none 
Save but the builder's name shall sound along 
The everlasting ages. Heart and brain 
Of thine must resolutely yoke themselves 
To slow-paced years of toil ; else all the trumps 
Of hero- heraldry that ever twang'd, 
Gather' d in one mad blaze above thy grave, 
Shall not avail to resurrect thy name 
To the salvation of remembrance then 
When once the letters of it have. sunk back 
Into the alphabet from off thy tomb." 

The name of the French naturalist Cuvier 
is eminently worthy of honour. He possessed 
a noble intellect, and devoted the whole of his 



70 CUVIER. 

time, from childhood, to mental improvement. 
To him the earth was a revelation of the in- 
finite wisdom of the Creator: he perused it, and 
gave the wonderful results to the world. He 
was the son of a regimental officer in the French 
service. He was a delicate child, but possessed 
remarkable intellectual vigour, and could read 
fluently when only four years old. His mother 
stimulated his passion for reading, and judi- 
ciously selected his books ; and he acquired in 
childhood an accurate and extensive historical 
knowledge. Madame Cuvier was pious, and 
he was accustomed to pray and to repeat pass- 
ages of Scripture daily at her side, and to con- 
verse with her on religious subjects. She was 
a lover of nature, and used to accompany him 
to and from school and to point out the in- 
teresting natural objects they met, and to excite 
in him a taste for the study of the works of 
God. He spent his leisure in gaining useful 
knowledge, seldom indulging in recreation, — 
except for his health, at the command of his 
mother. He was a great reader, and was able, 



CUVIER. 71 

at a very early age, to appreciate learned and 
substantial works. The writings of Buffon 
and Gesner strengthened his taste for natural 
history, and at the age of twelve he had read 
so many works on the subject, and acquainted 
himself so thoroughly with the species and 
habits of the animal kingdom, that he would 
have compared favourably with many professors 
of science. At the age of fourteen, he formed 
a society of intelligent lads for the purpose of 
discussing science, literature and philosophy. 
He earned a reputation for erudition, and the 
genius thus early developed was soon rewarded. 
Duke Charles of Wurtemberg sent for him, 
and, greatly delighted with the high order of 
his abilities and scholarship, became his patron, 
and sent him to the University of Stuttgard. 
Here he distinguished himself as a student, 
and, during his spare hours, gathered many of 
those facts and illustrations that formed the 
basis of the productions for which he was 
famous. 

The life of Cuvier was highly successful, 



72 GEORGE STEPHENSON. 

and he laid the foundation of his success by 
sacrificing the frivolities of youth and devoting 
the time to the cultivation of his mind. He 
was made Chancellor of State by Napoleon, 
and created baron by Louis XVIII. His 
scientific works are of permanent value, and 
his amiable, affectionate disposition was in 
keeping with his genius. 

George Stephenson was emphatically one of 
nature's noblemen. He was born in a colliery 
village, near Newcastle-on-Tyne. His father 
was very poor, and fired a pumping-engine in 
the colliery. He was the second of six chil- 
dren, none of whom were sent to school. He 
helped maintain himself in his childhood by 
herding cows, closing the gates after the coal- 
wagons had passed at night, driving the gin- 
horse, and like occupations. He was a sober, 
steady, hard-working lad, and was employed 
on the engine with his father, as an assistant 
fireman, and subsequently as a plugman. The 
machinery excited his curiosity : he acquainted 
himself with its construction ; his mechanical 



GEOEGE STEPHENSON. 73 

genius became restless, and lie aspired to be an 
engineer. He desired to know about the 
engines of Watt and Bolton ; he saw the neces- 
sity of book-knowledge, and at the age of 
eighteen began to learn to read. He at first 
attended a night-school kept by a poor village 
teacher, and subsequently took lessons of a 
Scotch dominie of mathematical reputation. 
He used to work at his problems during his 
spare moments at the engine, and ere long ex- 
celled his master in the use of figures. He was 
next employed as a brakeman, and received 
liberal wages. He occupied his leisure in 
studying mechanics, making inventions, and 
modelling experimental engines. Steadily 
rising, he was appointed to superintend the 
working of one of Watt and Bolton's engines, 
near Montrose, Scotland. During his absence 
his aged father lost his eyesight by an accident, 
and, on his return to England, George paid his 
father's debts, and provided for his parents a 
comfortable home, and supported them out of 
his earnings. 



74 GEORGE STEPHENSON. 

He made many improvements in engineering 
apparatus, and was appointed engine-wright 
of Killingworth colliery ; and the construction 
of a locomotive of superior power began to be 
his study and day-dream. He felt that the 
engines of the day were practically failures ; he 
declared his ability to produce one of superior 
advantages, and was authorized by Lord 
Ravensworth to carry out his plan. He con- 
structed a locomotive which was a great im- 
provement, and, having invented the steam- 
blast, he constructed another which was a 
perfect success. Thereafter George Stephenson 
was a man of note. He was employed as a 
constructor of railways, and as an engineer, at 
large salaries; he established a locomotive- 
manufactory; he superintended the construction 
of some of the most important railway connec- 
tions in England ; he was the hero of railroad 
jubilees, at which the great statesmen of the 
times were present; he was sent for by Leopold, 
King of the Belgians, who conferred with him 
in regard to the formation of railway-lines in 



GEOBGE STEPHENSON. 75 

his kingdom ; he was made a Belgian knight, 
and received the offer of knighthood from Sir 
Robert Peel. The railways of the present 
time would probably girdle the earth several 
times ; and George Stephenson's works are his 
noblest monument, and will carry his name 
into all lands. 

Mr. Stephenson in his latter years was 
assisted in his business by his son Robert, a 
mechanical genius and an accomplished young 
man. The manner in which he procured for 
him an education he thus describes in a speech 
at Newcastle: "In the earlier period of my 
career, when Robert was a little boy, I saw 
how deficient I was in education; and I made 
up my mind that he should not labour under 
the same defect, but that I would put him to 
school and give him a liberal training. I was, 
however, a poor man ; and how do you think I 
managed? I betook myself to mending my 
neighbours' clocks and watches at night, after 
my daily labour was done ; and thus I procured 
the means of educating my son." 



76 WILLIAM COBBETT. 

Mr. Stephenson despised show, foppery and 
fashion, and considered any thing of that 
nature derogatory to a young man. To an 
elegantly-dressed youth he one day said, " You 

will, I hope, Mr. , excuse me ; I am a 

plain-spoken person, and am sorry to see a 
nice-looking and rather clever young man like 
you disfigured with that fine-patterned waist- 
coat and all these chains and fang-dangs. If 
I, sir, had bothered my head with such things 
at your age, I would not have been where I 
am now." 

William Cobbett rose from extreme poverty 
to distinction, and became a member of the 
British Parliament, and made the English 
aristocracy tremble at his influence. The 
secret of this bold and wonderful man's success 
may be inferred from the fact that in a period 
of something more than forty years he pub- 
lished fifty volumes of his writings and edited 
ninety volumes of his political papers. The 
influence of a man making such tremendous 
struggles and sacrifices could not be otherwise 



BUNHILL FIELDS. 77 

than felt. Opinions differ as to the motives 
that actuated Cobbett, but his industry affords 
a strong example of what a man of unwavering 
resolution may accomplish ; and the results of 
his labours justified the eulogy of ■•Ebenezer 
Elliot:— 

" Dead oak, thou livest ! 
Thy smitten hands, 
The thunder of thy brow, 
Speak with strange tongues in many lands, 
And tyrants hear thee now." 

All have read of the mighty names that im- 
part so many historic associations to the solemn 
vaults of Westminster Abbey of London, of 
St. Peter's at Rome, and of the Pantheon and 
of Notre Dame of Paris. Turn we to a more 
humble spot. We stand in Bunhill Fields. 
The shadows of the old chapel of Wesley 
lengthen in the declining sun. In the rear of 
the ancestral and shadowy edifice sleeps the 
great reformer Wesley. How do the names 
of proud cardinals and stately archbishops lose 
their dignity, and seem like the hollow echoes 

of departed pride, at the mention of that hal- 

7* 



78 BUNHILL FIELDS^ 

lowed name ! Wesley ! — who stemmed the cur- 
rent of persecution and the fury of mobs, who 
made the fields his rostrum and the broad 
heaven the arch of his church, that he might 
dispense the gospel among the poor. The 
grave of Susannah Wesley is here, more worthy 
of honour than that of the mother of princes. 
Here repose Charles Wesley and Dr. Watts. 
Wesley and Watts! whose songs are among the 
most priceless legacies ever bequeathed to the 
world, — songs that ever fall upon the ear of 
God, sung by the labourer during the hours 
of the day, ascending from numerous Chris- 
tian assemblies each eve, and swelling a great 
diapason each Sabbath from the universal 
church. There sleeps Bunyan, whose chart 
has led many a wanderer to the celestial city, 
and whose crown of rejoicing gathers new stars 
with the advancing years. Adam Clarke, Dr. 
Owen, Richard Watson, George Burder, and 
Nathaniel Mather mingle their dust in the 
great evangelical brotherhood of these holy 
Fields. All around, the eye rests on the tomb- 



BUNHILL FIELDS. 79 

stones of humble men who became powerful 
exponents of the truth of God, — men whose 
expectations and inheritance were not earthly. 
A reverential awe creeps over us as we linger 
here: we feel that we stand among the ele- 
ments of a glorious resurrection, and anticipate 
the day when the trumpet shall "sound and the 
dead, small and great, shall stand before God. 
What emblazoned abbey or stately cathedral 
holds dust more precious and honoured? 
•These were not only nature's noblemen, but 
the princes of God's spiritual kingdom that 
will forever endure. 



V. 

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 



CARDINAL RICHELIEU-WHITEFIELD— THOMAS WALSH— COWPER— JONA- 
THAN EDWARDS-AARON BURR. 



81 



s 



THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

CARDIN AL RICHELIEU — WHITEFIELD — THO- 
MAS WALSH — COWPER — JONATHAN ED- 
WARDS — AARON BURR. 

pARDINAL RICHELIEU, at the close 
^ of his life, acknowledged that he had been 
drawn into many irregularities by State policy, 
and that, to silence the reproaches of his con- 
science concerning them, he had been tempted 
to disbelieve in God and in a future state. 
" But so strong was the idea of God in his 
soul, so clear the impression of him upon 
nature, so unanimous the consent of mankind, 
and so powerful the conviction of his own con- 
science, that he could not avoid the necessity 

83 



84 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

of admitting a Supreme Being and a future 
state; and he wished to live as one that mast 
die, and to die as one that must live forever." 
A person once called upon him, and, finding 
him in dejection, asked him why he was so sad. 

" The soul," replied Richelieu, " is a serious 
thing : it must either be sad here for a moment, 
or be sad forever." 

Young reader, before every Worldly con- 
sideration your soul demands your serious 
attention. Eternity alone can estimate its 
value, and eternity alone can tell the mo- 
mentous issues that hang on each rapidly- 
passing moment, on each unreturning day and 
month and year. Go to the city of the dead, 
and on many stones you will find your own 
age chiselled ; and they who sleep beneath 
were, perhaps, cut off with as bright anticipa- 
tions of worldly happiness and utility as you 
yourself possess. But the grass rustles above 
their remains, their state in eternity is fixed, 
and solemn indeed is the memento mori of 
their tombs. Nothing is enduring that is not 



THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 85 

spiritual. Destiny lies in the soul. That soul 
must be renewed by the Holy Spirit, or it can 
have no fellowship with God, no interest in 
heaven. "Except a man be born again, he 
cannot see the kingdom of God." " That which 
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is 
born of the Spirit is spirit." 

Says some thoughtful reader, "What -is this 
new birth? To me the subject is veiled in 
mystery." 

It is being made sensible of the presence of 
God in the soul; it is being endowed with 
spiritual senses ; it is being brought into com- 
munion with the heavenly world and made 
acquainted with heavenly joys through the 
love of a risen Redeemer; it is being filled 
with a sense of the love of God, conforming 
the soul to those holy dispositions that prepare 
it for a heavenly abode, and transforming man 
from a carnal to a spiritual being. 

Says Whitefield of his earliest spiritual bless- 
ings, " But, oh, with what joy — joy unspeak- 
able, even joy that was full and big with glory 



86 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

— was my soul filled when the weight of sin 
went off, and an abiding sense of the pardon- 
ing love of God, and a full assurance of faith, 
broke in upon my disconsolate soul ! Surely 
it was the day of my espousal, — a day to be 
had in everlasting remembrance. At first my 
joys were like a spring-tide, and, as it were, 
overflowed the banks. . Go where I would, I 
could not avoid singing psalms almost aloud. 
Afterwards they became more settled, and, blessed 
be God, saving a few casual intervals, have 
abode and increased in my soul ever since." 
After a period of growth in grace, he thus 
speaks of his spiritual exaltation : — " I have a 
garden near at hand, where I go particularly 
to meet and talk with mv God at the cool of 
every day. I often sit in silence, offering 
my soul as so much clay, to be stamped just as 
my heavenly potter pleases ; and, while I am 
musing, I am often filled, as it were, with the 
fulness of God. I am frequently at Calvary, 
and frequently on Mount Tabor, but always 
assured of my Lord's everlasting love." " Our 



THE SPIKITUAL LIFE. 87 

dear Lord sweetly fills me with his presence. 
My heaven is begun indeed." Says Thomas 
Walsh — Wesley's most distinguished and eru- 
dite coadjutor in Ireland — of his first spiritual 
enjoyments, " And now I felt of a truth that 
faith is the substance of things hoped for, and 
the evidence of things not seen. God and the 
things of the invisible world, of which I had 
only heard before by the hearing of the ear, 
appeared now in their true light, as substantial 
realities. Faith gave me to see a reconciled 
God and an all-sufficient Saviour. The king- 
dom of God was within me. I walked and 
talked with God all the day long ; whatsoever 
I believed to be his will I did with my whole 
heart. I could unfeignedly love them that 
hated me, and pray for them that despitefully 
used and persecuted me. The commandments 
of God were my delight. I not only rejoiced 
evermore, but prayed without ceasing, and in 
every thing gave thanks; whether I ate, or 
drank, or whatever I did, it was in the name 
of the Lord Jesus and to the glory of God." 



88 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

Sings Cowper, his soul glowing with rapture 
at the dawning of a spiritual day, — 

"Author and Guardian of my life, 
Sweet source of light divine, 
And — all harmonious names in one — 
My Saviour, thou art mine ! 

"What thanks I owe thee, and what love, 
A boundless, endless store, 
Shall echo through the realms above 
When time shall be no more." 

" But what," asks the inquirer, " is essential 
to his glorious renewal ?" 

First, you must firmly resolve to forsake 
sin and devote your life to God. Secondly, 
you must believe in Jesus. You must believe 
that for you he became a " man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief;" that for you he bore 
to the uttermost the cruelty of the world he 
came to bless and to save; that for you he 
agonized in Gethsemane and shed his blood 
on Calvary. You must believe his promises 
as though he spake them in your ears. You 
must come unto him as though you really 
heard him saying, " Come unto me, all ye that 



THE SPIEITUAL LIFE. 89 

labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest." Thirdly, you must look for salva- 
tion through his merits, you must cast your- 
self on his mercy, and commit your soul into 
his hands for time and eternity. Allow no 
consideration, however plausible, to prevent 
you from coming directly to Christ. Waste 
not time in seeking conviction. Although great 
compunction and prolonged conflict have cha- 
racterized the religious experiences of many 
eminent Christians, a calmer and more delibe- 
rate frame of mind often precedes conversion. 
" To-day, if you will hear his voice," is the 
spirit of the Scriptures; and the scriptural 
illustrations of conversion point to an imme- 
diate belief in Christ. Nor must you doubt 
the willingness of the Saviour to receive you, 
though crushed with a sense of the magnitude 
of your sin. " To the uttermost" is the lan- 
guage of revelation. u Though your sins be 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." 
"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come; 
and let him that heareth say, Come. And 

8* 



90 JONATHAN EDWAEDS. 

whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." 

The early religious life of Jonathan Edwards 
presents to the reader an instructive view of 
the work of grace in the soul, and is, perhaps, 
consonant with a large number of Christian 
experiences. He was often thoughtful con- 
cerning religion during his boyhood, and was 
twice especially awakened to the worth of his 
soul and the necessity of an interest in the 
Saviour. In one of these periods of concern, 
he used to pray several times a day, and fre- 
quently held prayer-meetings with his com- 
panions in the woods ; and, although he does 
not date his conversion from this time, he took 
much delight in the performance of religious 
duties. A deeper and more permanent interest 
fixed itself upon his mind as he advanced to- 
wards manhood, and he resolved to give up the 
world for Christ and to make the seeking of 
salvation the business of his life. 

" My concern," he says, " continued and 
prevailed with many exercising thoughts and 



JONATHAN EDWAKDS. 91 

inward struggles; and yet it never seemed 
proper to express that concern by the name of 
terror." 

This fixed purpose to seek an interest in 
Christ was blessed. 

Jonathan Edwards is regarded as one of 
New England's choicest ministers. Hallowed 
memories cluster around the old burying- 
ground at Princeton, where rest the remains of 
the early presidents of the New Jersey College. 
There, near each other, repose Jonathan Ed- 
wards and his son- in law, President Burr, the 
husband of the beautiful and devout Esther. 

At their feet is an obelisk, that speaks not 
of divinity or of piety, but of political position 
and of fame. It marks the grave of Aaron 
Burr, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, a man 
of pleasure and of the w T orld, who rejected the 
faith of his fathers for the ruinous philosophy 
of Chesterfield. Cast upon the world an 
orphan, he early discovered unusual abilities, 
and at the age of thirteen was a college junior. 
An extensive revival of religion blessed the 



92 AAEON BURR. 

college of which he was a student, and he was 
awakened to a sense of the value of his soul. 
He succeeded partially in stifling his powerful 
sense of duty ; but an unrest remained : the 
Holy Spirit, though baffled, mercifully lin- 
gered. After his collegiate course, he went to 
an old friend of his father, an estimable and 
learned divine, to study theology, and to con- 
sider the things relating to his spiritual welfare. 
Here, after a period of speculative reasoning 
and religious disputation, in which he probably 
found a false philosophy more congenial to his 
pride and unbridled aspirations than the 
gospel, he deliberately rejected not only the 
claims of the Holy Spirit upon him personally, 
but Christianity itself. The world now 
opened its temptations, its pleasures, its allure- 
ments to temporal glory. He entered the 
army ; he rose to military honours. He left the 
army at the close of the American Revolution, 
and settled in New York. His military dis- 
tinction, his personal beauty, his courtly man- 
ners, his wit, his learning and his ancestry 



AAEON BURE. 93 

made him a marked man and prominent in 
society. He became a lawyer and a politician. 
Aiffbition fired his soul ; he aspired to be chief 
magistrate of the nation \ he became a national 
Senator, and then Vice-President of the Re- 
public. But he had a rival, an eminent man, 
an avowed political enemy, whose penetration 
had pierced his very soul and there discovered 
dark designs. He could not brook the fearful 
denunciations that his rival hurled against him : 
he challenged him to mortal combat ; he mur- 
dered him ! Public opinion rose against the 
murderer and branded | him with the mark of 
Cain ; and he was no longer the hero of popular 
applause, but an outcast from society. He was 
still restless for power, and a dark project for 
advancement filled his imagination. He would 
wrest Mexico from Spain ; he would build up 
a southwestern empire; he himself should 
wield the sceptre ; he would, perhaps, enlarge 
his domain by acquisition or conquest from the 
Federal Union. He gathered an army of 
reckless, adventurous men ; he was arrested for 



94 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

high treason ; the bubble burst, and his che- 
rished scheme covered him with ignominy in- 
stead of the fame of a conqueror. He becsRne 
an exile ; he visited England, Sweden, France. 
England expelled him from her shores; 
France held him under surveillance, and the 
destitution of a common beggar added to his 
burden of misery. The popular wrath of his 
native country subsiding, he returned to New 
York, and passed an old age of misery, folly 
and sin. " Gracious God ! for what a fate am 
I reserved \ v he bitterly exclaimed, as domestic 
calamities added to his numberless woes^ And 
the pitiable old man died impenitent, — 

"With vanish'd hopes and happy smiles 
All lost for evermore, — 
Like ships that sail'd for sunny isles 
But never came to shore." 

That man was Aaron Burr. Wide indeed 
is the contrast between him and his distin- 
guished ancestor, — between the wily and ac- 
complished infidel and the learned and zealous 
divine. The story has its own instructive 
moral. 



VI. 
THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE, 



COWPER— MRS. EDWARDS— RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN SICKNESS — IN 
TRIAL— AT THE HOUR OF DEATH. 



95 



VI. 

THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

COWPER — MRS. EDWARDS — RELIGIOUS EXPE- 
RIENCE IN SICKNESS — IN TRIAL — AT THE 
HOUR OF DEATH. 

/~\UR youth are exposed to the temptation of 
^ skepticism. Some young persons are con- 
stitutionally skeptical, and many, anxious to 
know the truth and to practise it, are per- 
plexed with the arguments of skeptical writers 
or of skeptical companions. " There is a great 
deal of infidelity in young people," said Dr. 
Gordon to his pastor, on his death-bed, " and 
you have many of them about you. Tell them 
from me that I have read a great many skep- 
tical books, ancient and modern, of all sorts. 

9 97 



98 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

It is all fallacious : they are very plausible, 
but can give no consolation in a dying hour." 
The mind that becomes unsettled by the 
errors of speculative infidelity is in a fearful 
state. God is the source of true wisdom, of 
human happiness and hope ; and he who loses 
his confidence in God makes his life aimless 
and hopeless. There is danger that he will 
adopt the sentiment of the fallen angel in 
Milton — 

"Evil, be thou my good." 

Said one to Wesley, — 

" I know there is a God, and I believe him 
to be the soul of all. But further than this I 
know not; all is dark; my thought is lost. 
Whence I came I know not, nor what nor 
why I am, nor whither I am going. But this 
I know : — I am unhappy ; I am weary of life ; 
I wish it were at an end." 

David Hume wrote as follows : — 

"When I look abroad, I foresee on every 
side dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny 
and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, 



THE EXPEKIMENTAE EVIDENCE. 99 

I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All 
the world conspires to oppose and contradict 
me; though such is my weakness that I feel 
all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves 
when unsupported by the approbation of 
others. . . . 

" The intense view of these manifold contra- 
dictions and imperfections of human reason 
has so wrought upon and heated my brain 
that I am ready to reject all belief and reason- 
ing, and can look upon no opinion even as 
more probable or likely than another. Where 
am I, or what ? From what causes do I de- 
rive my existence, and to w^hat condition shall 
I return? Whose favour shall I court, and 
whose anger must I dread? What beings 
surround me ? . . . I am confounded with all 
these questions, and begin to fancy myself in 
the most deplorable condition imaginable, en- 
vironed with the deepest darkness, and utterly 
deprived of the use of every faculty and 
member." 

" Xo honest man," says Dr. Johnson, " could 



100 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

be a Deist ; for no one could be so after a care- 
ful examination of the proofs of Christianity." 
" A little philosophy," says Lord Bacon, " in- 
clineth man to atheism; but depth of philo- 
sophy bringeth men's minds back to religion." 
It is true that there are certain teachings of 
nature and of philosophy, certain data of his- 
tory and developments of science, that strongly 
evidence the truth of Christianity. But they 
are secondary evidences. The most satisfac- 
tory evidence of Christianity is actual religious 
experience. External evidences may convince 
us of the credibility of religion and of our 
need of spiritual renovation ; but, without an 
experimental knowledge of the truth, God 
will be to us merely the marvellous Being 
that nature reveals. The divine unction, the 
heavenly peace and rapturous love, the strong 
faith, and all the holy and heavenly disposi- 
tions that centre in the soul enlightened by the 
Holy Spirit, find no medium to our spiritual 
natures through the revelations of philosophy, 
but come through the channels opened by the 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 101 

humiliation and passion of the Redeemer of 
mankind. Through the gospel of Jesus, and 
through that only, can the alienated affections 
of man be borne back to the bosom of the 
Father, and the faith of man in religion be 
established. The Saviour came not to de- 
mand of the world to receive religion on the 
evidence of philosophy, but upon the evidence 
of experience, — an experience that should re- 
veal God to the soul. "My doctrine," he 
said, " is not mine, but his that sent me. If 
any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I 
speak of myself." (John vii. 16, 17.) If we 
follow the precepts of the gospel humbly and 
sincerely, we shall be blessed with a sense of 
God's presence in our souls, we shall have 
rapturous communion with him, our prayers 
will be answered, and that exalted love for 
God and for spiritual things that springs up 
within us will destroy the power of tempta- 
tion, expand the soul, purify the heart, fulfil 
the moral law, and crown the close of life with 

9* 



102 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

that triumphant assurance of eternal happiness 
that destroys the terror of death.* 

A single prayer that finds acceptance with 
God and is answered by. the descent of the 
Holy Spirit, opening sweet communion with 
heaven and filling the soul with a sense of 
divine love, is a more satisfactory proof of the 
reality of religion than the profoundest re- 
searches of philosophy. He whose mind is 
filled with a sense of God's love doubts not 
the existence of God, for the evidence is within 
him ; nor does he doubt the divinity of the 
Saviour, for by him he approached the Al- 
mighty's throne ; nor does he doubt the truth 
of the gospel, for its promises and prophecies 
are fulfilled in him, and no human foresight 
could have invented a plan that would have 
brought him into sensible communion with 



* He that has not felt this divine presence in his soul 
has no .correct idea of religion ; and it is an interesting 
fact that the arguments of the skeptic against religion, 
while claiming great erudition, treat of a subject of whose 
main evidence he has no intelligent conception. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 103 

God; nor does he doubt the immortality of 
the soul : he already tastes the joys of heaven 
and lives in the dawn of eternal day. Were 
the Scriptures silent concerning immortality, 
he might commit his own spirit by faith into 
the keeping of God, and safely believe that 
God would receive him to his bosom and to 
everlasting rest. 

During his early religious enjoyments, Cow- 
per sings,- — 

"How blest thy creature is, God, 
When with a single eye 
He views the lustre of thy word, 
The day-spring from on high ! 

" Through all the storms that veil the skies 
And frown on earthly things, 
The Sun of righteousness he eyes, 
With healing on his wings. 

11 Struck by that light, the human heart, 
A barren soil no more, 
Sends the sweet smell of grace abroad, 
Where serpents lurk'd before. 

" The soul, a dreary province once 
Of Satan's dark domain, 
Feels a new empire form'd within, 
And owns a heavenly reign. 



104 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

11 The glorious orb, whose golden beams 
The fruitful year control, 
Since first, obedient to thy word, 
He started from the goal, 

"Has cheer'd the nations with the joys 
His orient beams impart ; 
But, Jesus, 'tis thy light alone 
Can shine upon the heart." 

Says Mrs. Sarah Edwards of a season of 
religious exaltation, "I never before, for so 
long a time together, enjoyed so much of the 
light and rest and sweetness of heaven in my 
soul. The greater part of the night I lay 
awake, sometimes asleep, and sometimes be- 
tween sleeping and waking. But all night I 
continued in a constant, clear and lively sense 
of the heavenly sweetness of Christ's excellent 
and transcendent love, of his nearness to me 
and of my dearness to him, with an inex- 
pressibly sweet calmness of soul in an entire 
rest in him. I seemed to myself to perceive a 
glow of divine love come down from Christ in 
heaven, into my heart, in a constant stream, 
like a stream or ray of sweet light. At the 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 105 

same time, my heart and soul all flowed out in 
love to Christ, so that there seemed to be a 
constant flowing and reflowing of heavenly 
and divine love from Christ, and these bright, 
sweet beams of the love of Christ like the 
motes swimming in the beams of the sun, or 
the streams of his light which come in at the 
window. Thus my soul remained in a kind of 
heavenly elysium. So far as I am capable of 
making a comparison, I think that what I felt 
each minute, during the continuance of the whole 
time, was worth more than all the outward com- 
fort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my 
whole life put together. It was a pure delight, 
which fed and satisfied the soul. It was pleasure 
without the least sting or any interruption. It 
was sweetness which my soul was lost in." 

Dr. Chalmers, in treating of the experi- 
mental evidence of Christianity as taught in 
the Scriptures, says, "But the truth is that 
this peculiar method bears upon itself another 
impress of the divinity ; and that not merely 
because light hath been made to arise in the 



106 THE EXPEKIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

mind by a way altogether distinct from any 
of the processes of human teaching, but also 
in the very way that is specified and laid 
down in the book itself. Being ' renewed in 
knowledge/ being c called out of darkness into 
marvellous light/ having the eyes 'opened to 
behold/ having the ' secrets of the heart made 
manifest/ being struck with the conviction of 
inward want and worthlessness on the one 
hand, and also, on the other, with the efficiency 
of the proposed application, — these all point 
to a great event at the outset of a man's real 
and decided Christianity ; and should the event 
happen to any individual, there is to him a 
correspondence between the announcement in 
the book, and what to himself is a most in- 
teresting passage in his own history, which 
might serve still more to evince the powerful 
and the presiding intelligence by which it is 
animated. What it affirms is not a something 
which is within us, but a something which will 
befall us ; not a description of our present state, 
but the actual prediction or rather fulfilment 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 107 

of a promise in our future history. The divi- 
nation, in fact, is heightened into a prophecy. 
i He that seeketh findeth : } this, if at length 
verified upon us and verified in the very pecu- 
liar way that we have already explained, will 
lead us to the view of another coincidence more 
remarkable than any which we have yet speci- 
fied. Not a coincidence between the statements 
of the book and the state of our own moral 
economy; not a coincidence between the pro- 
visions which it offers and the felt necessities 
of our actual condition; but a coincidence 
between what is to us a most interesting pro- 
phecy or promise, and the living and actual 
fulfilment of it in our own persons, — a proof 
most effective individually to ourselves, and 
which, multiplied as it is in the frequent and 
unceasing repetitions of it throughout all the 
countries of Christendom, might furnish a 
general and enlightened observer with the 
very strongest materials for the demonstra- 
tion of the reality of our faith. 

" The event which we now suppose to have 



108 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

taken place in the mental history of the in- 
quirer ... is in itself a distinct and additional 
evidence. There is even more in it than another 
species of accordance besides either of these 
which come under the two former heads of this 
argument/ — not an accordancy between what 
the Bible says we are and what we discern our- 
selves to be, not an accordancy between what the 
Bible offers as a remedy and what we feel that 
we require, but an accordancy between what 
the Bible says will happen to its disciples, and 
what they experience in themselves to happen 
actually. But, over and above this, we behold, 
in this great spiritual transaction, the characters 
not merely of the divine prescience, but of 
the divine agency. For it comes as the fulfil- 
ment of a promise, and in answer to prayer, 
and so gives the irresistible conviction that 
the power and the will and the knowledge and 
the faithfulness of the living God are all con- 
cerned in it. It bears every mark of a special 

* See Chalmers's " Evidences of Christianity." 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 109 

interposition on the part of Him who com- 
mands 'the light to shine 'out of darkness/ 
who hath promised to draw near unto those 
who draw near unto him, and tells the sinner 
who awakens at his call that l Christ shall give 
him light/ . .• . 

" But he who is the subject of this visitation 
may be altogether unable to philosophize on 
the grounds of that conviction in which it is 
issued, or on the steps by which he has been 
led to it. The conviction, however, is not the 
less clear or warrantable on that account. He 
who has thus been made to see, sees upon 
evidence as sound as to himself it is satisfac- 
tory; and could we by any means be made 
to know what passes in the minds of others 
as intimately as we know and feel what passes 
in our own minds, we might from the history 
of every manifestation gather a strong argu- 
ment of a peculiar but very conclusive kind, 
for the truth of Christianity. Such a general 
observation as this, however, is not very 

practicable; and therefore it is the more 

10 



110 THE EXPEEIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

fortunate that this evidence, which it is so 
difficult to collect* from the history of others, 
gathers in brightness every day along the line 
of the individual history of each real Chris- 
tian. And this experimental evidence is per- 
petually growing. There is not merely an 
agreement between the declarations of the 
book and his own experience in the great 
event that marks and that constitutes, in fact, 
the outset of that new moral career upon 
which he has entered; but there is a sustained 
agreement between its declarations and the 
evolutions of his mental and spiritual history 
in all time coming. . . . And so it is that 
even the unlettered peasant may receive an 
impression of the truth of this book from the 
truth of its manifold agreements with his 
own intimate experience. He may recognize 
throughout its pages, not merely the shrewd 
discernment of what he is, but the prophetic 
discernment of what he will be along the 
successive stages of his preparation for heaven. 
And, with every new experience of the way in 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. Ill 

which its descriptions tally with the details of 
his own history ,— as in the account, for exam- 
ple, that it gives of the exercises of the spirit, 
whether under the afflictions of life or the 
assaults of temptation, or in the fulfilments 
of prayer, or in the facilities that open up 
for a still more prosperous cultivation of the 
heart, along the path of an advancing excel- 
lence, or in the light which it casts over the 
ways and the arrangements of Providence 
in the world. There redounds from all these, 
and from many more which cannot be speci- 
fied, the glory of an increasing evidence for 
the truth of that volume whose insight not 
only reaches to the penetration of the human 
character, but lays open the secrets of the dark 
places that lie in the womb of futurity. This 
is truly an accumulating evidence. It brightens 
with every new fulfilment and every new step 
on the journey of a Christian's life; and, amid 
the incredulity and derision of those who have 
no sympathy either with his convictions or his 
hopes, still we hold that the faith thus origin- 



112 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

ated and thus sustained is the faith not of 
fanaticism, but of sound philosophy; that his 
experimental Christianity rests, in fact, on a 
basis as firm as experimental science; that 
there is neither delusion in the growing lustre 
of his convictions through life, nor delusion in 
the concluding triumphs and ecstasy of his 
death-bed.*' 

Let us illustrate this elaborate idea of Chal- 
mers. Take, for example, the fulfilment of 
God's prophecies concerning the comfort and 
support he will afford his afflicted children. 

"Truly," wrote Samuel Pearce, during pro- 
tracted illness, "I have proved that God is 
faithful ; and most cheerfully would I take 
double the affliction for one-half the joy and 
sweetness that have attended it." 

"I am extremely weak," he wrote to Dr. 
Ry land ; " and now that warm weather which 
I came into Devon to seek I dread as much 
as the cold, because it excites the fever. I am 
happy, however, in the Lord. I have not a 
wish to live or die, but as he pleases." 



THE EXPEEIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 113 

" The sick-bed is a Bethel to me," he said 
to a friend : " it is none other than the house 
of God and the gate of heaven. I can 
scarcely express the pleasures that I have en- 
joyed in this affliction. It scarcely can be 
called an affliction, it is so counterbalanced 
with joy." 

"As a man who during the day descends 
into a deep pit sees the friendly stars of 
heaven, invisible to others," wrote Rev. Henry 
Mowes during a lingering indisposition fol- 
lowing a period of terrible physical distress, 
"so, when God allowed me to fall into the 
depths of suffering and woe, I saw, through 
the dense darkness around me, the bright star 
of the Father's eternal mercy in Christ our 
Saviour shining over me. And this star was 
my polar star, — never setting, but ever grow- 
ing brighter. . . . Oh, it is a high and holy joy 
to be with our Saviour even in Gethsemane, — 
to bear with him a crown of thorns, and in 
such an hour, strengthened by him, to say, 

i The disciple is not above his Master/ . . 

10* 



114 THE EXPERIMENTAL, EVIDENCE. 

To follow him in bright days, and to sun 
ourselves in his love and glory, is sweet 
indeed; but in days of sorrow to see him 
near, to prove his faithfulness, is a precious 
addition to the happiness of communion with 
him. There the bond is drawn yet nearer, 
there the heart presses yet closer to him, 
there the soul lays herself down at his feet 
with fuller love and trust." 

Dr. Watts expresses his feelings during a 
painful illness in the following beautiful and 
characteristic lines : — 

" Yet, gracious God, amidst these storms of nature 
Thine eyes behold a sweet and sacred calm 
Reign through the realms of conscience. All within 
Lies peaceful, all composed. 'Tis wondrous grace 
Keeps off thy terrors from this humble bosom, 
Though stain' d with sins and follies, yet serene 
In penitential peace and cheerful hope, 
Sprinkled and guarded with atoning blood. 
Thy vital smiles, amidst this desolation, 
Break out in happy moments with bright radiance, 
Cleaving the gloom ; the fair celestial light 
Softens and gilds the horrors of the storm, 
And richest cordials to the heart conveys. 

"Oh, glorious solace of immense distress! 
A conscience and a God. A friend at home, 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 115 

And better friend on high. This is my rock 
Against infernal arrows. Rise, my soul ; 
Put on thy courage ! here's the living spring 
Of joys divinely sweet and ever new, 
A peaceful conscience, and a smiling heaven." 

"I had before prayed with much uneasi- 
ness," wrote the German poet Klopstock at 
the decease of his amiable and beloved Chris- 
tian wife. " I could now pray quite differently. 
I entreated perfect submission. My soul hung 
on God. I was refreshed. I was comforted and 
prepared for the stroke that was already near, 
—nearer than I thought. I believed that she 
would yet live some hours, — that was my only 
hope, — and that, according to her wish, ex- 
pressed not long before I left her, I might 
once more be permitted to pray with her. 
But how often are our thoughts not as God's 
thoughts! I said, soon after her death, 'She is 
not far from me: we are both in the hand of 
the Almighty/ 

"After some time, I wished to see what I 
had just before called my Meta. They pre- 



116 THE EXPEEIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

vented me. I said to one of our friends, 
e Then I will forbear. She will rise again. 7 

" The second night came the blessing of her 
death. Till then I had considered it only a 
trial. The blessing of such a death in its full 
power came on me. I passed above an hour 
in silent rapture. Only once in my life did I 
ever feel any thing similar, — when, in my youth, 
I thought myself dying ; but the moments of 
my expected departure then were somewhat 
different. My soul was raised with gratitude 
and joy; but that sweet silence was not in it. 
The highest degree of peace with which I am 
acquainted was in my soul. This state began 
with my recollecting that her Accomplisher 
and my Advocate said, ' He who loveth father 
or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' 

"It is impossible to describe all the blessings 
of that hour. I was never before with such 
certainty convinced of my salvation." 

'Let us go to the bed of death, to that outer 
court of the palace of the Great King, where 
the glory of heaven is so frequently revealed. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 117 

Stephen beheld God's glory and died. The 
dying saint frequently beholds such visions : 
it is promised that his faith shall triumph in 
death. 

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay 'd, 

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made ; 
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 
As they draw near to their eternal home ; 
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view 
That stand upon the threshold of the new." 

"The celestial city/' said Payson, "is full 
in my view. Its glories beam upon me, — its 
sounds strike upon my ears." 

" Christ"— "angels" — " beautiful"—" mag- 
nificent" — "delightful," was the language of 
the expiring Dr. Hope. 

" Home, home !" said Normand Smith. " I 
see the New Jerusalem. They praise Him, 
they praise Him." 

"Now farewell, world," said Eev. Mr. 
Holland, "welcome heaven; the Day-Star 
from on high has visited my heart. Oh, 
speak it when I am gone, and preach it at 
my funeral. God dealeth familiarly with 



118 THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

man. I feel his mercy. I see his majesty. 
Whether in the body or out of the body, I 
cannot tell ; but I see things that are unutter- 
able." 

"I have been," said Walker of Truro, 
"upon the wings of cherubim. Heaven has 
in a manner been opened to me. I shall soon 
be there." 

" Do you see," said Edmund Auger, " that 
blessed assembly who await my arrival ? Do 
you hear that sweet music, with which those 
holy men invite me, that I may henceforth be 
a partaker of their happiness ? How delight- 
ful it is to be in the society of blessed spirits ! 
Let us go. We must go. Let me go !" .* 

"You seem to enjoy foretastes of heaven," 
said one to H. S. Golding. "Oh, this is no 
longer a foretaste," was the joyful assent: "this 
is heaven ! I not only feel the climate, but I 
breathe the ambrosial air, of heaven, and shall 
soon enjoy the company." 

"I breathe the air of heaven," said Dr. 
Stephen Gano. " My soul is filled with God 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 119 

and Christ. Come — Lord Jesus — come — 
quickly." 

We cannot, perhaps, better close this chapter 
than by quoting the antithesis of Cowper 
between a poor and aged but pious peasant 
and Voltaire : 

" She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, 
Of little understanding and no wit, 
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true, — 
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew, — 
And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes 
• Her title to a treasure in the skies. 

"0 happy peasant ! unhappy bard ! — 
His the mere tinsel, her's the rich reward. 
He, praised perhaps for ages yet to come ; 
She, never heard of half a mile from home ; 
He lost in errors, his vain heart prefers ; 
She, safe in the simplicity of her's." 



VII. 
AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 



AX EXPERIENCE. 



11 121 



VII. 
AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 

"God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
in God, and God in him." 

AN EXPERIENCE. 

fTIHE seeker after religion sometimes thinks 
-*- that mental suffering is necessary to com- 
mend him to the favour of God. He feels that 
he is a sinner, and that he needs a Saviour; but 
he has none of that anguish of mind of which 
he has heard in accounts of remarkable con- 
versions, a period of which he supposes must 
precede acceptance with God. Under this im- 
pression he spends weeks, perhaps months, 
seeking the terrors of conviction, — performing 
a sort of penance by which he expects to win, 
ultimately, the divine favour. The error is dis- 
couraging and unscriptural. The Scriptures 

123 



124 AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 

afford no incident of long and terrible convic- 
tion. It required but little conviction for the 
Israelites to look to the brazen serpent and be 
healed. Three thousand were convicted and 
converted on the day of Pentecost. The eunuch 
was convicted and converted during the preach- 
ing of Philip. Repent and believe, — turn 
from your sins and cast yourself on the mercy 
of God, — is the direction of the gospel. " Now 
is the accepted time/' God wants repentance 
and faith, not terror of mind. " I want reli- 
gion/' said a penitent : " I have been praying 
six weeks/' " For what have you been pray- 
ing ?" asked a clergyman. " For conviction/' 
was the reply. "Do you not feel that you 
area sinner?" "Yes, an unworthy sinner." 
" Then no more seek conviction, but cast your- 
self at once oh the mercy of God." The peni- 
tent was soon rejoicing in hope. The Holy, 
Spirit sometimes shows the soul all its terrible 
depravity, and the full extent of its danger, and 
overwhelms it with the appalling truths ; but 
it does not lead all persons to God in the same 



AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 125 

way. It leads the willing, longing soul more 
gently than the soul that resists its influence. 

Again : the young convert who has experi- 
enced no remarkable terrors of mind is often 
troubled in regard to the genuineness of his 
conversion, on hearing of accounts of deep con- 
viction. Such trials are alike unwise and un- 
scriptural. If he has the love of God in his 
heart, he is truly converted. To yield to this 
temptation of distrusting God is ungrateful and 
sinful. God explicitly enjoins a childlike con- 
fidence of his children. If God leads us to 
him by the subduing influences of Calvary, in- 
stead of by the terrors of Sinai, we should be 
grateful rather than distrustful. 

Among the papers of Rev. John Newton is 
an account of the religious experience of an 
excellent clergyman, which is an instance of 
that quiet kind of conversion of which but 
little is said or written. 

He had been long thoughtful on religious 

subjects, though speculative, whenthe death of 

a very dear friend led him frequently to the 

11* 



126 AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 

throne of grace, and turned his thoughts con- 
stantly to heavenly things. He had a strong 
desire to meet that friend in heaven ; and this 
led him to the reading of those religious works 
that favoured the idea of the future reunion of 
friends. His religious readings and researches 
led him to contemplate the character of God. 
He was suddenly struck and delighted with its 
loveliness ; it subdued his heart to penitence ; 
he gave himself up to God, and experienced 
immediately the joys of the believer. Of this 
sudden and interesting change he says, — 

" I saw so clearly God's supreme worthiness 
of all my love and obedience, that my mind 
was carried by a sweet and irresistible force to 
love him with sincerity, and my heart, broken 
at the sight, abhorred its past ingratitude. I 
instantly conceived the purpose of a total re- 
form in my conduct, of a universal attention to 
all his commandments, and to take them for 
my rule of life thenceforth, and without any ex- 
ception. This appeared to me not only perfectly 
just and right, but easy also, and pleasant. I 



AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 127 

seemed to myself to have been hitherto the 
blindest and most ungrateful of creatures, who 
had never formed to myself such views of God 
before, who had neither loved nor obeyed him. 
"From that memorable day my condition 
became widely different, and my course of life 
also. I had acquired new ideas of God, of 
myself, of the vanity of earthly things, and of 
the inestimable value of grace and divine com- 
munion. I was translated as it were into a 
new world. Christ lived in me, though until 
then I had not know T n him, and thus I became 
a new creature. My ideas now of the infinite 
excellence and loveliness of God w T ere lively 
and perspicuous. Such also were my appre- 
hensions of my duty towards him, of my own 
excessive ingratitude and disobedience, and of 
God's powerful and unmerited grace, by which 
he had quickened me. Fears of divine wrath 
I had none ; no dread of punishment. That ,1 
deserved it, indeed, and was utterly unworthy 
of his favour, I saw plainly ; notwithstanding 
which I never for a moment supposed myself 



128 AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 

an object of divine wrath, or feared lest I 
should suffer the punishment that I had de- 
served. It was a subject on which anxiety, fear, 
doubt, had no place in me. A lively percep- 
tion of the divine glory and beauty, an un- 
speakable sense of his gracious presence, an 
experimental acquaintance with the delight that 
belongs to an effectual love to him; — these 
things secured me from all such terrors, and 
filled me with exceeding joy. In such a state 
of mind I could not doubt one moment con- 
cerning my admittance to the divine favour and 
communion, for I had a sensible experience of 
both, — knowing myself, however, at the same 
time unworthy of them, and unable to account 
for the gift of them to me, otherwise than in 
virtue of the blood and spirit of Christ alone." 
The subsequent life of the convert showed 
that his was a case of true conversion. Yet it 
was preceded by no remarkable distress of 
mind, but simply by contemplations that re- 
vealed to him the loveliness of the character of 
God, and the duty of loving and serving a 



\ 



AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 129 

Being so beneficent. To those troubled in re- 
gard to conviction, the lesson is useful and in- 
structive. 

But because we may receive the witness of 
the Spirit that we are born of God without 
being overwhelmed with the terrors of convic- 
tion, let no one imagine that repentance is 
a light thing. " Repentance," says Jeremy 
Taylor, in his Holy Living and Dying, " of all 
things in the world makes the greatest change : 
it changes things in heaven and earth, for it 
changes the whole man from sin to grace, from 
vicious habits to holy customs, from unchaste 
bodies to angelical souls, from swine to philoso- 
phers, from drunkenness to sober counsels ; and 
God himself, with whom is no variableness or 
shadow of change, is pleased, by descending to 
our weak understandings, to say that he changes 
also upon man's repentance ; that he alters his 
decrees, revokes his sentence, cancels the bills 
of accusation, throws the records of shame and 
sorrow from the court of heaven, and lifts up 
the sinner from the grave to life, from his 



130 AN IMPEDIMENT TO FAITH. 

prison to a throne, from hell and the guilt of 
eternal torture to heaven, and to a title to never- 
ceasing felicities." 

The new birth is an event in which the God 
of the universe is made manifest to our spiritual 
discernment, and one over which angels rejoice. 
It is an event of stupendous moment, — beyond 
finite conception ; our destiny, millions of ages 
to come, centre in it ; joys which the eye hath 
not seen, nor the ear heard, nor the heart of 
man conceived, depend upon it. We may 
experience it in answer to prayer, when 
hungering and thirsting for righteousness, or 
when overwhelmed with conviction; but its 
transforming power is the same: our hearts 
are filled with the love of God and our 
spiritual constitution prepared for a transit to 
a better world. 

Persevere, then, young follower of Christ. 
Seek higher spiritual attainments, and your 
faith will be established. You will soon walk 
in Beulah ; you will soon stand on the Delec- 
table Mountains; you will soon walk in 
Paradise with the redeemed. 



VIII 

LIFE IN EARNEST. 

8UIMEEFIELD. 



131 



VIII. 
LIFE IN EARNEST. 

SUMMEEFIELD. 

** TTERE he lives who was so many years, 
-*--*- but lived but seven," was the inscrip- 
tion on the tomb of Similis of Xiphilim. A 
sadder record might be engraved on many 
monuments. Sickness, death, or some solemn 
issue alone arouse many people to a sober esti- 
mate of their responsibility to themselves, to 
the world and to God. We read of those of 
old who, dying, wished for a truce until morn- 
ing; and a dying English queen declared she 
would give all her possessions for a moment 
of time. 

Life is serious, and is passing; the soul is 
serious, and its destiny lies in the flying hours ; 
our responsibility to the world is serious, and 

12 133 



134 SITMMERFIELD. 

no regrets in declining life can produce fruits 
of usefulness in departed years. 

The youth does not regard life as it is. He 
lives as though it was an infinite instead of a 
brief period. As age creeps on, he realizes the 
sentiment of Montgomery : — 

"to see 
All nature die, and find myself at ease, 
In youth this seem'd to mean immortality; 
But I have changed now, and feel with trees 
A brotherhood, and in their obsequies 
Think of my own." 

Young reader, go to your life-work at once 
and with resolution. You may die young, but 
you may accomplish much in a limited period 
if you yield to your sense of responsibility to 
God, and make the best use of your faculties ; 
should you live to be old, you can never retrieve 
the loss if you waste your early years. 

" He who runs it well twice runs the race." 

John Summerfield, the young Wesleyan 
divine, affords an interesting illustration of 
the power of an earnest life. Plis parents 



SUMMEKFIELD. 135 

were pious, and his father had devoutly wished 
for a son who should devote himself to the 
ministry, and whose name should be John. 
John Summerfield was devoted to the work of 
the ministry by paternal prayers in his infancy ; 
and, although he became dissipated in youth, 
and his father's faith was subjected to severe 
trial, he, at the age of nineteen, turned his 
attention^to the concerns of his soul. 

He thus relates his religious experience in a 
letter : — 

" As my father wrote to you some time ago, 
you have some idea of the change which, by 
the grace of God, has been effected in me : you 
know what I was, God knows w r hat I am. 
If you except family and filial affection, of 
which I was never devoid, you may fill up the 
catalogue of my conduct in any w^ay you please. 
Truly — 

' I the chief of sinners am ; 
But Jesus died for me.' 

Various were the chastisements the Lord laid 
upon me to bring me to himself, — prisons, dis- 



136 SUMMEBFIELD. 

tresses, afflictions, nay, I might add, death 
itself. This last had the effect: while my 
body was brought down to the verge of the 
pit, my mind began to think of God. I 
vowed a vow unto the Lord : he knows the 
nature of it : he received it. I was restored 
to health, and, by the strength of God, I am 
performing it. 

" I began to seek him whom I had before 
despised; the world was stripped of her 
charms; I saw with new eyes; Jesus was 
the only amiable object, while I loathed 
myself in dust and ashes that I so late to him 
did turn. However, my cry was incessant 

' Only Jesus will I know, 
And Jesus crucified.' 

Long was my struggle for mercy, severe w T as my 
agony ; often tempted to suicide to rid myself of 
the pangs of a wounded spirit; but finally the 
Lord lifted upon me the light of his counte- 
nance, and spoke to my heart as with an audi- 
ble voice, ' I have loved thee with an everlast- 



SUMMERFIELD. 137 

ing love/ Oh, how was I melted ! I wept, — 
but they were tears of joy; I groaned, — but 
they were unutterable groans. Heaven pro- 
claimed, ' My beloved is mine/ and my heart 
replied, ' I am his/ Thus I began to serve 
the Lord. This was October, 1817, now a 
year and a half ago ; but, oh, what has God 
done since then ! Last September I embarked 
in the same vessel with Jesus, — I began the 
ministration of the word of life to others. 
Six months have I wearied this feeble body 
in the laborious calling; and yet I am not 
tired. I hope I shall never put off the 
harness." 

Being called to watch with a sick person 
during his earlier religious experience, he says, 
"I found my friend no more a man: he was 
now become an angel. I remained with the 
beautiful clay all night. Oh that I was landed 
as safely beyond the stream !" 

Mr. Summerfield applied himself labori- 
ously to study, and became a Biblical scholar. 
lie watched his time, that no moment might 

12* 



138 • SUMMEKFIELD. 

be lost. He had a defect in his speech ; but 
his resolution overcame it. Ireland was the 
first field of his ministerial labours, and the 
fame of his pulpit eloquence soon filled the 
country. Multitudes flocked to hear him, and 
hung on his inspired tongue as on an issue of 
life or death. Once, having failed to preach 
satisfactorily to himself, he says, "Oh, the in- 
firmity of man, unwilling to be humbled, dis- 
satisfied if he cannot please himself in serving 
God!" 

A holy ambition and a fiery zeal possessed 
Summerfield. Of his going to preach on one 
occasion he says, '" I could not help thinking 
how like a travelling preacher I was then. A 
boy whom I had hired walked before me with 
my travelling-bag, like a preacher's port- 
manteau, and I was hurrying after, to meet im- 
mortal souls who were waiting for me. John 
Wesley rushed on my mind. Oh that I had his 
spirit, his zeal, his piety ! then indeed I should 
be a burning and a shining light in the world." 
He speaks of his travelling ninety-six miles and 



SUMMERFIELD. 139 

preaching ten sermons in seven days, — of his 
travelling three hundred and sixty-two miles 
and preaching fifty sermons in seven weeks. 
The following extracts from his journal show 
his lively religious enjoyments : — 

"Feb. 28 [1819]. — I grew this day in grace 
and knowledge. The sacred page had new 
beauties and ideas to my soul. March 4. — My 
mind has been sweetly exercising faith in Jesus 
this day. March 7. — My Jesus was precious 
to me this morning : my heart was melted 
down, and he gave me a sweet foretaste of the 
good things of this day. March 8. — I am 
quite hoarse to-day, after yesterday's exer- 
tions ; but my Jesus has paid me for all by a 
sweet sense of his love which I feel upon me. 
March 10. — My mind is truly dgected : for the 
last two days I have been in Gethsemane. I 
long for the time of refreshing. Come, my 
Lord, come quickly. ' I cried unto the Lord : 
ho heard me, and delivered me from all my 
troubles/ I seldom had such a pouring out of 



140 SUMMERFIELD. 

the divine glory." Again, in a letter, he says 
of his spiritual desires, "I pant after a full 
conformity to the mind of Jesus. I feel .that I 
want an abiding witness of the Spirit. I want 
to arrive at that state when 

* Not a cloud shall arise 
To darken the skies, 

Or hide for one moment 
My Lord from my eyes.' " 

He went to England. As the shores of 
Ireland receded, he thus bids the scenes of his 
earlier labours an affecting farewell : — " Fare- 
well, my sweetest friends. Farewell, Ireland, 
that concealest all that I love dear on earth : 
yet I give you all up ; the cross, but then the 
crown ; I leave a land of friends, I fly to a land 
of strangers. Cease, fond nature, cease thy 
strife. It is for Jesus. Farewell ! Adieu !" 

He preached in England, and rekindled 
much of the enthusiasm of the Wesleyan 
fathers. He came to America. Crowds in our 
principal cities flocked to hear him. But, 
while at the summit of his popularity, his 



SUMMEKFXELD. 141 

iiealth gave way. He rallied, and went to 
France, but shortly returned to America, where 
his genius flashed forth in a self-consuming 
blaze. 

Summerfield died at the age of twenty-seven ; 
but at this early age he had accomplished 
more than most of the men of his times, and, 
measured by this standard, his life was long. 
The steps of heaven glow with many feet who 
heard in his voice the voice of God calling 
them to repentance ; and, though his years were 
few, his crown of rejoicing must be brilliant 
among celestial diadems. 

"And many of them that sleep in the dust 
of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting 
life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. And they that be wise shall shine as 
the brightness of the firmament ; and they that 
turn many to righteousness, as the stars, for 
ever and ever." 



IX. 
THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 



SIR PHILIP SIDSEI— VISCEST PE PAUL— MRS. UNWIN— KLOPSTOCK. 



143 



IX. 

THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 

" I do not remember to have read that ever any chari- 
table person died an evil death." 

St. Jerome. 

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY — VINCENT DE PAUL — 
MRS. UNWIN — KLOPSTOCK. 

QYMPATHY is a mission. Its rewards are 
an approving conscience, the love and re- 
spect of the world, and the peculiar favour of 
God. 

There are hearts that ache in almost every 
household ; and the aching heart hungers for 
sympathy. The neglected child that crosses our 
path, the youth whom the world has flattered 
and crushed, the man whose hopes have been 
wrecked, and who feels that he has nothing for 

13 145 



146 THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 

# 

which to live, the aged who have seen the end 
of what they cherished, — all have unutterable 
longings for some affectionate heart to share 
their grief. " Kiss me, Hardy," said the dying 
Nelson. At that bitter hour even the stern 
man of battle longed for sympathy. 

It is strange that, poor, weak creatures as we 
are ourselves, we have so little sympathy for 
others. We are prone to look upon the sor- 
rows of others not as He looked upon them 
who went about relieving human misery, and 
who spake to the downcast disciples words of 
unequalled tenderness, but as the common 
affairs of life, in which we have no concern 
and to which we owe no duty. We seem to 
forget that we are all members of one common 
family, that we are all subject to like feelings, 
and that it is as hard for others to suffer as it is 
for ourselves. As we see the deformed, the beg- 
gar, the shabbily-dressed man who has known 
better days, or any marked by misfortune, we 
seldom think how sadly we should feel in their 
situation. We smile at some facetious remark 



THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 147 

made about them by a companion, without 
thinking how our crushed spirit would feel at 
a smile. We let some trivial thing prevent us 
from visiting the sick or the needy, but we do 
not reflect how we should feel, languishing in 
pain, without the soothing influence of inte- 
rested and affectionate friends, or passing weary 
hours uncertain whence the sustenance was to 
come to save us from 'perishing. There are 
comparatively few who, retiring at night amid 
the comforts of life, 

" Think for a moment on his wretched fate 
Whom friends and fortune quite disown : 
111 satisfied keen nature's clamorous call, 
Stretch'd on his straw, he lays himself to sleep, 
While, through the ragged roof and chinky wall, 
Chill o'er his slumbers piles .the drifty heap : — 
Think on the dungeon's grim confine, 
Where guilt and poor misfortune pine. ,, 

Yet who has made us to differ ? He who has 
made our lives pleasant has made the unfor- 
tunate pensioners upon our bounty ; and we are 
unworthy of the blessings he has bestowed upon 
us if we are unwilling to impart them to others. 



148 VINCENT DE PAUL. 

Our feelings should be so susceptible to misfor- 
tune that we cannot passively endure that an- 
other should suffer. When the amiable Sir 
Philip Sidney was dying on the battle-field, an 
attendant brought him some water. A wounded 
soldier looked wishfully at the cup. " Bear it 
to him," said Sir.. Philip : " his necessity is 
greater than mine." Vincent de Paul, the 
French philanthropist, on passing a row of 
galley-convicts, found one in the deepest de- 
jection on account of the family he had left 
dependent on him for support. The heart of 
Vincent was touched. He offered to take the 
man's place, and thus procured for him a re- 
lease. For eight months he worked in the 
galleys with a chain about his leg; and he bore 
the marks of his servitude to the close of his 
life. 

It is not the fame of a Howard, a Wilber- 
force, a Vincent de^Paul, or an Isabella 
Graham, that makes one a true philanthropist. 
Heaven is full of those who were as noble- 
hearted as these, but of whom the tablet of 



MARY UNWIN. * 149 

fame reveals nothing. The young man who 
labours to support and make pleasant the 
declining years of a poor father, and the 
girl who, turning her back on the gayeties 
of youth, lives to solace a feeble mother, are 
philanthropists in the sight of God, and, how- 
ever little is known of them here, their names 
are spoken among the angels. The humble 
man who, pitying the misfortunes of another, 
♦ makes him a pleasant home, is as noble in 
the sight of God as the millionaire who 
founds an asylum and whose name is chiselled 
in granite and familiar to the world. 

Mrs. Unwin, the friend of Cowper, is a 
representative of that noble class of persons 
who derive their happiness from imparting 
comfort to others. Cowper was insane. In- 
sanity, indeed, calls for commiseration. The 
darkened mind gropes vaguely for human 
love; the heavy heart longs for some one in 
whom to confide. He w r ho brings a smile to 
the fixed, lined features of such a one sends 
beams of light where all is chaotic and cheer- 

13* 



150 ■ MARY UNWLN". 

less. The case of Cowper was extremely 
touching. Innocent and tender-hearted, lov- 
ing all and beloved by all, desiring the com- 
forts of religion, and clinging to the forms of 
religious devotion, he lived, looking upon 
himself as an outcast from God and doomed 
to eternal misery. 

"My love is slain, and by my crime is slain: 
Ah! now beneath whose wings shall I repose ?" 

The delusion lay upon his mind like an incu- 
bus ; and, except at brief intervals, the lapse 
of time did not remove it. 

^Seasons return'd ; but not to him return'd 
God and the sweet approach of heavenly day." 

The unhappy poet was the care of Mrs. 
Mary Unwin. He was not her relative : he 
had entered her house as a boarder, and while 
there his malady returned. But she knew 
that he looked up to her as to a mother, and 
that without her his case would be greatly 
aggravated; and she willingly consented to 
become his nurse. Her husband soon after 



MARY UN WIN. 151 

died; the malady of Cowper became settled; 
and, from pure sympathy, she devoted to him 
the whole of her subsequent life. During his 
long periods of excitement, when for months 
no smile would enliven his countenance, she 
watched by him day and night, regardless of 
her health, ever seeking to impart to him 
some ray of comfort. And when the sable 
veil was partially lifted, it was her constant 
care to make his life flow so smoothly that his 
mind might be strengthened by the soothing 
influence. She encouraged poetical composi- 
tion; for she knew its salutary effects on a 
mind like his. She chose his subjects; and 
we are indirectly indebted to her for some of 
his most beautiful poems. Of her devotion to 
him in his darker hours he writes, on one 
occasion, " I walk constantly, — that is to say, 
Mrs. Unwin and I together; for at such 
times I keep her constantly employed, and 
never suffer her to be absent from me many 
minutes. She gives me all her time and all 
her attention, and forgets that there is another 



152 FAMILY SYMPATHY. 

object in the world." And again, on another 
occasion, " The whole management of me de- 
volved upon her; and a terrible task she had. 
She performed it, however, with cheerfulness 
hardly ever equalled ; and I have often heard 
her say that, if ever she praised God in her 
life, it was when she found that she was to 
have all the labour. She performed it, accord- 
ingly, but, as I hinted once before, very much 
to the hurt of her own constitution." It was 
to her, as he sat by her side in her last days, 
that he wrote the touching poem commencing — 

" The twentieth year is wellnigh past 
Since first our sky was overcast : 
Ah, would that this might be the last, 

My Mary! 

" Thy spirits have a fainter flow ; 
I see thee daily weaker grow: 
'Twas my distress that brought thee low, 

My Mary." 

One's own family frequently offers opportu- 
nities for the tenderest sympathy; and few 
scenes are so lovely as a sympathetic family. 
The sympathy between the German poet 






KLOPSTOCEU 153 

Klopstock &nd his amiable wife in her last 
sickness was most delicate and beautiful. She 
herself looked upon death with composure, 
but was solicitous as to how her husband 
would bear the separation. Wishing to pre- 
pare his mind for that event, she wrote to him 
a letter, in which she says, — 

" Let God give what fce will, I shall still be 
happy. A longer life with you, or an eternal 
life with him! But can you as easily part 
from me as I from you ? You are to remain 
in this world, — in a world without me ! You 
know I have always wished to be the survivor, 
because I well know it is the hardest to endure; 
but perhaps it is the will of God that you 
should be left, and perhaps you have most 
strength. Oh, think where I am going, — and, 
as far as sinners can judge of each other, you 
may be certain that I go there (the humble 
hopes of a Christian cannot deceive) ; and 
there you will follow me. There shall we be 
forever, united by love, which assuredly was 
not made to cease." 



154 KLOPSTOCK. 

How tender, thoughtful and comforting ! 

Of the last hours they spent together, Klop- 
stock gives the following account : — 

"When I began to fear for her life (as I 
did sooner than any one else), I from time to 
time whispered something in her ear concern- 
ing God, but so as not to let her perceive my 
apprehensions. I know little of what I said : 
only, in general, I know that I repeated to her 
how much I was strengthened by the uncom- 
mon fortitude graciously vouchsafed to her, 
and that I now reminded her of that to which 
we had so often encouraged each other, — per- 
fect resignation. When she had already suf- 
fered greatly, I said to her, with much emotion, 
' The Most Merciful is with thee/ I saw how 
she felt it. Perhaps she now first guessed that 
I thought she would die. I saw this in her 
countenance. I afterwards told her (as often as 
I could go into the room and support the sight 
of her sufferings) how visibly the grace of God 
was with her. How could I refrain from 
speaking of the great comfort of my soul ? 



KLOPSTOCK. 155 

"I came in just as she had been bled. A 
light having been brought near on that 
account, I saw her face clearly for the first 
time after many hours. Ah, my Cramer, 
the hue of death was on it! But that God 
who was so mightily with her supported me 
too at the sight. She was better after the 
bleeding, but soon worse again. I was allowed 
but very little time to take leave of her. I had 
some hopes that I might return to pray with 
her. I shall never cease to thank God for the 
grace he gave me at this parting. I said, ' I 
will fulfil my promise, my Meta, and tell you 
that your life, from extreme weakness, is in 
danger/ You must not expect me to relate 
every thing to you. I cannot recollect the 
whole. She heard perfectly, and spoke without 
the smallest difficulty. I pronounced over her 
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost. i Now the will of Him who inexpress- 
ibly supports thee, his will be done/ 'Let 
him do according to his will/ said she : i he 
will do welV She said this in a most express- 



156 KLOPSTOCK. 

ive tone of joy and confidence. € You have 
endured like an angel; God has been with 
you ; he will be with you. His mighty name 
be praised. The Most Merciful will support 
you. Were I so wretched as not to be a 
Christian, I should now become one/ Some- 
thing of this sort, and yet more, I said to her 
in a strong emotion of transport. Eliza [Mrs. 
K/s sister] says we were both full of joy. e Be 
my guardian angel, if our God will permit/ 
'You have been mine/ said she. 'Be my 
guardian angel/ repeated I, 'if our God per- 
mit/ ' Who would not be so ?' said she. . . 
At parting, she said to me, very sweetly, ' Thou 
wilt follow me!' Oh, might I now for one 
moment weep on her bosom I For I cannot 
refrain fro*m tears ; nor does God require it of 
me." 

Such sympathy makes one seem almost 
angelical. We know the souls that are to 
walk in Paradise. The love they bear with 
them evinces their destiny. 

Reader, have you had misfortunes that fling 



THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 157 

their shadows along the pathway of life ? Are 
you poor ? Do you lack brilliant qualities of 
mind ? And for such things do you repine at 
Providence? Go to the abodes of the destitute; 
perform kind offices, listen to life-histories, talk 
of Christ's sympathy for the poor, of God's 
promises to the humble who trust* in him. 
Go to the hospital, and behold what you might 
be physically ; go to the retreat for the insane, 
and behold what you might be mentally; go 
to the prison, and behold what you might be 
morally; and in each of these places gladden 
desponding hearts. Do you yourself long for 
sympathy, friendship, love ? Do you sometimes 
exclaim, in weariness of spirit, "Oh, earth! 
earth ! earth !" and find in the friendless echo 
your only answer? There are hearts more deso- 
late than your's, — hearts full of sympathy and 
affection, and that only need a gentle hand to 
unseal the fountain. 

" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me." "We shall soon be done with oppor- 

14 



158 THE MISSION OF SYMPATHY. 

tunities for usefulness; we shall soon meet 
again each act of our lives at the judgment, and 
we may there behold the Saviour, not as a 
stranger, but as a friend, to whose wants we 
have administered by acts of kindness to his 
followers. 

As one by one of our friends and acquaint- 
ances pass away, we may solemnly ask the 
question whether we have done all we could to 
make their lives pleasant and to insure their 
eternal welfare, or whether they have gone to 
the bar of God as a witness against us. 

" Here lies the body of Estella, who by acts 
of kindness and deeds of charity transported 
a large fortune to heaven, and has gone thither 
to enjoy it." Such was an inscription on an 
Italian monument. Who would not wish that 
like record might be engraved on his own 
tomb ? 



X. 



LIFE'S CLOSE AND ITS LESSONS, 



ADDISON— LORD ROCHESTER— YOLTAIRE — CARDINAL MAZARIN— HOBEES 
— PAKE — VOLiVEY — SHELLEY— CHURCHILL — GIBBON— HUME- 
LORD CHESTERFIELD— MADAME DE POMPADOUR— DUKE OF 
BUCKINGHAM— A MAN 0? PLEASURE— GORDON HALL 
—FLETCHER— WHITEFIELD— THE POET NICOLL 
— GREAT TRIUMPHS. 



159 



X. 

LIFE'S CLOSE AND ITS LESSONS. 

ADDISON LOED ROCHESTER — VOLTAIRE 

CARDINAL MAZARIN — HOBBES — PAINE — 

VOLNEY — SHELLEY CHURCHILL GIBBON 

— HUME LORD CHESTERFIELD— MADAME 

DE POMPADOUR — DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM 

A MAN OF PLEASURE — GORDON HALL 

FLETCHER WHITEFIELD — THE POET 

NICOLL — GREAT TRIUMPHS. 

A S the poet Addison lay on his death-bed, 
-*■-*- he sent for Lord Warwick, a near rela- 
tive and an erring young man, on whom his 
pious precepts had fallen unheeded. He had 
one more lesson to teach, and that a most im- 
pressive one. "Dear sir," said the young 
nobleman, " you sent for me : I believe and 

14.* 161 



1 



162 ADDISON. 

hope you have some commands; I shall hold 
them most dear." Affectionately grasping his 
friend's hand, the dying poet said, "I have 
sent for you that you may see how a Christian 
can die." 

The testimony of the dying is always re- 
garded with interest. There is wisdom in the 
experience of a lifetime, and it is proper that 
the verdict of dying lips should impress the 
mind. A dying man acts himself; every de- 
lusion by which he has endeavoured to quiet 
the clamours of his conscience vanishes ; the 
world can promise him nothing more; the 
future can afford him no hopes that do not 
centre in God ; his belief in the Deity, in re- 
ligion, in virtue, rises above every considera- 
tion, and he judges himself and estimates his 
conduct in life in the solemn light of eternity. 
The scene of Lord Warwick at the death-bed 
of Addison is impressive, — the giddy youth, on 
the threshold of manhood, receiving the last 
solemn lesson of the venerable Christian on 
the threshold of eternity. What effect the in- 



ADDISON. 163 

terview had on the subsequent life of Lord 
Warwick we do not know ; but, whatever it 
may have been in that particular case, a young 
man may gather the most salutary lessons by 
contemplating the words and the behaviour of 
the dying. He may well pause in his reading 
when his eye falls on a final testimony, and 
learn to shun the mistakes by which others have 
made wrecks of their lives, and to practise 
those virtues that prove satisfactory and en- 
during. 

Dying testimonies show the folly of endea- 
vouring to deceive ourselves in respect to our 
relations to God. Death corrects our known 
errors, it crushes our speculative reasonings, 
and allows our innate consciousness of truth to' 
assert its authority. As death approaches, a 
man review^ his life, and his motives and con- 
duct are brought into judgment before the 
tribunal of his conscience ; he cannot flee from 
himself; he cannot stifle his convictions of the 
right and wrong of the motives that have gov- 
erned his behaviour ; and if, to palliate irregu- 



164 JOHN WILMOT. 

larities in his moral conduct, lie has called 
error truth, he will find it a fearful thing to 
be undeceived. 

John Wilmot, Lord Rochester, was an ac- 
complished nobleman and a favourite of Charles 
II. He became dissolute, a votary to the wine- 
cup and to sensual pleasure, and a defender of 
infidelity. He confessed to Dr. Burnet that 
for five years his dissipation was so excessive 
that he was at no time master of himself. The 
age of thirty-one found him with his physical 
powers ruined and his prospects of life pre- 
carious. His infidel principles forsook him, 
and, trembling in view of future punishment, 
he turned penitently to God. During his pro- 
tracted illness, he published a confession of his 
errors, declaring that " he left the world this 
last declaration, which he delivered in the 
presence of the great God, who knows the 
secrets of all hearts, and before whom he was 
preparing to be judged, that from the bottom 
of his soul he detested and abhorred the whole 
course of his former wicked life." " Oh, remern- 



VOLTAIKE. 165 

ber," he Said to a friend who visited him on his 
death-bed, "that you contemn God no more. 
He is an avenging God, and will visit you for 
your sins, and will, I hope, touch your con- 
science sooner or later, as he has done mine. 
You and I have been friends and sinners toge- 
ther a great while ; and therefore I am the more 
free with you. We have been all mistaken in 
our conceits and opinions ; our persuasions have 
been false and groundless. Therefore God 
grant you repentance." 

" I am abandoned by God and man !" ex- 
claimed Voltaire, in his last sickness. After a 
long exile, he had returned to Paris in triumph. 
His name was the signal for enthusiasm. He 
had even feared that he should expire amid the 
acclamations which his presence called forth at 
the theatre. But neither the shouts of the popu- 
lace nor the assurance of his atheistical friends 
could stay his faith on his own philosophy in 
the prospect of the coming judgment. He re- 
nounced his opinions, but died in the expecta- 
tion of future retribution. 



166 CARDINAL MAZARIN. 

" Guenard has said it ! Guenard has said it I" 
mournfully said Cardinal Mazarin, alluding to 
the declaration of his physician that he must 
die. He was heard to exclaim, "O my poor 
soul, what will become of thee? Whither 
wilt thou go?" To the queen-dowager of 
France he said, " Madame, your favours have 
undone me. Were I to live again, I would be 
a monk rather than courtier.'' Such were the 
sober reflections of an ecclesiastic whose bound- 
less ambition had overruled his sense of moral 
obligation, and whose adroit policy had vir- 
tually placed in his hands the sceptre of France. 
But Mazarin, though awakened to his situation, 
was too much joined to his politics and plea- 
sures to turn manfully to religion. Cards were 
one of his last amusements ; and, when dying, 
he ordered himself to be rouged and dressed, 
that he might receive the flattery of his courtiers 
on his apparent recovery. 

There are hours of sober thought, and times 
of imminent peril, when the soul seems to fore- 
cast the dying hour, — when it starts at the 



HOBBES — PAINE — VOLNEY — SHELLEY. 167 

view of its conscious errors, and utters, as from 
dying lips, its settled convictions. Hobbes was 
subject to the most gloomy reflections, and was 
thrown into a state of terror if left alone in the 
dark. He declared, on one occasion, that, had 
he the whole world to dispose of, he would 
give it for a single day to live. He died with 
the declaration that he was taking a leap in the 
dark. Paine, in his last sickness, would cry 
out with affright if left alone night or day. 

Volney, after deriding religion, while sailing 
on Lake Ontario, was thrown into a state of 
consternation very inconsistent w r ith his philoso- 
phy, as a sudden storm exposed him to immi- 
nent peril. Shelley, during a storm at sea, was 
stupefied with terror, and, when the danger 
was past, declared to Lord Byron that he had 
tasted so much of the bitterness of death that 
in the future he should entertain doubts of his 
own creed. The poet Churchill, whose life 
was marked by apostasy from religion and by 
excessive dissipation, thus writes in a sober 
hour: — 



168 GIBBON. 

" Look back ! a thought which borders on despair, 
Which human nature must, but cannot, bear. 
'Tis not the babbling of a busy world, 
Where praise and censure are at random hurl'd, 
Which can the meanest of my thoughts control, 
Or shake one settled purpose of my soul : 
Free and at large might their wild curses roam, 
If all, if all, alas ! were well at home ! 
No : 'tis the tale which angry conscience tells, 
When she with more than tragic horror swells 
Each circumstance of guilt, — when, stern, but true, 
She brings bad actions forth into review, 
And, like the dread handwriting on the wall, 
Bids late remorse awake to reason's call, 
Arm'd at all points, bids scorpion vengeance pass, 
And to the mind holds up reflection's glass, — 
The mind, which, starting, heaves the heartfelt groan, 
And hates that form she knows to be her own." 

There is something mournful in the declara- 
tion of Gibbon on the night he completed the 
" Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." " It 
was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th 
of June, 1787, between tlie hours' of eleven 
and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of 
the last page, in a summer-house in my 
garden. After laying down my pen, I took 
several turns in a covered walk of acacias, 
which commands a prospect of the country, 



HUME. 169 

the lake and .the mountains. The air W&s 
temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb 
of the moon was reflected from the waters, 
and all Nature was silent. I will not dissem- 
ble the first emotions of joy on the recovery 
of my freedom and perhaps the establish- 
ment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread 
over my mind, by the idea that I had taken 
an everlasting leave of an agreeable compa- 
nion, and that, whatsoever might be the future 
date of my history, the life of the historian 
must be short and precarious." 

Still more gloomy is the declaration of 
Flume on reviewing his life and works : — " I 
am at first affrighted and confounded by the 
forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my 
philosophy, and fancy myself some strange, 
uncouth monster, who, not being able to 
mingle and unite in society, has been expelled 
all human commerce and left utterly aban- 
doned and disconsolate. Fain would I run 
into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but 

15 



170 LORD CHESTERFIELD. 

cannot prevail upon myself to mix with such 
deformity. I call upon others to join with me 
to make a company apart, but no one will 
hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, 
and dreads the storm that beats upon me from 
every side. When I look abroad, I foresee on 
every side dispute, contradiction, anger, ca- 
lumny and detraction. When I turn my eye 
inward, I find nothing but doubt and igno- 
rance." 

The testimony of gay and worldly-minded 
people in the decline of life shows the folly 
of wasting the powers God has given us for 
noble purposes in the pursuit of pleasure. 
The voluptuary reviews his life sadly; his 
pleasures are past, and are, therefore, as 
though they had never been; his misused 
faculties rise up in judgment against him ; he 
trembles as he reflects on his own identity. 

" I have seen," wrote that gay, fashionable 
and accomplished nobleman, Lord Chesterfield, 
" the silly rounds of business and pleasure, and 
have done with them all. I have enjoyed all 



LOBD CHESTEKFIELD. 171 

the pleasures of the world, and, consequently, 
know their futility and do not regret their 
loss. I apprize them at their real value, — 
which, in truth, is very low; whereas those 
who have not experienced always overrate 
them. They only see their gay outside, and 
are dazzled with their glare ; but I have been 
behind the scenes. . . . When I reflect back 
upon what I have seen, what I have heard 
and what I have done, I can hardly persuade 
myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle 
and pleasure of the world had any reality ; but 
I look upon all that has passed as one of those 
romantic dreams which opium commonly occa- 
sions, and I by no means desire to repeat the 
nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive 
dream. Shall I tell you that I bear this 
melancholy situation with that meritorious 
constancy and resignation which most people 
boast of? No; for I really cannot help it. 
I bear it because I must bear it whether I 
will or no. I think of nothing but killing 
time the best way I can, now that he has 



172 MADAME DE PGMPADOUK. 

become mine enemy. It is my resolution to 
sleep in the carriage during the remainder of 
my journey." 

Who has not heard of Madame de Pompa- 
dour, that marvellous woman who for twenty 
years swayed the destinies of France? She 
was the daughter of a citizen of Paris, and 
the wife of a wealthy financier. Possessed of 
unusual powers of fascination, she determined 
to win the heart of that voluptuous king, 
Louis XV. She attracted his attention. He 
sent for her ; and she abandoned her devoted 
husband and became his favourite and the 
mistress of Versailles. The king bestowed 
upon her the title of Marchioness of Pompa- 
dour. She was ambitious, and easily usurped 
the royal prerogative. She sent those who 
displeased her to the Bastille; she dismissed 
ministers of state; she made cardinals, de- 
clared war, and made peace. A Jest of 
Frederick II. at her expense is said to have 
been the origin of the Seven Years' War. This 
guilty woman, whose wretched government did 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 173 

so much to hasten that awful human tragedy, 
the French Revolution, became most wretched 
in the decline of life, — the very objects for 
which she had sacrificed her honour becoming 
disgusting and hateful. Listen : — 

" What a situation is that of the great ! 
They only live in the future, and are only 
happy in hope : there is no peace in ambition ! 
I am always gloomy, and often so unreason- 
ably. The kindness of the king, the regards 
of courtiers, the attachment of my domestics, 
and the fidelity of a large number of friends, 
— motives like these, which ought to make me 
happy, affect me no longer. ... I have no 
longer an inclination for all which once pleased 
me. I have caused my house at Paris to be 
magnificently furnished : Well, that pleased me 
for two days. My residence at Believue is 
charming; and I alone cannot endure it. 
Benevolent people relate to me all the news 
and adventures of Paris ; they think I listen, 
but, when they have done, I ask them what 
they said. In a word, I do not live; I am 

15* 



174 MADAME DE POMPADOUK. 

dead before my time. I have no interest in 
the world. Every thing conspires to embitter 
my life. I have imputed to me the public 
misery, the misfortunes of war, and the 
triumphs of my enemies. I am accused of 
selling every thing, of disposing of every 
thing, of governing every thing. ... This 
hatred and this general exasperation of the 
nation grieve me exceedingly; my life is a 
continued death." 

Madame de .Pompadour breathed her last 
amid the splendours of Versailles. The day 
on which she Ayas buried was windy and 
stormy. As the mournful cortege moved off 
from the palace, the king stood at the window, 
and carelessly remarked, "The marchioness 
has rather a wet day to set out on her long 
journey." 

Dying testimonies forcibly illustrate the 
danger of delay in attention to religion. God 
warns the impenitent, by his Holy Spirit, to 
attend to their spiritual concerns. Life is 
uncertain, and its perils unforeseen. God 



PUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 175 

9 

knows all; he warns wisely, and it is pre- 
sumptuous to neglect the warning. 

There is an expectation which buoys up 
the minds of those v/ho neglect religion, that 
a period will certainly arrive when they shall 
acquaint themselves with God. To such, the 
words of the dying have a most impressive 
lesson. 

" However I may act in opposition to the 
principles of religion or the dictates of reason/' 
wrote George Villiers, the noted Duke of 
Buckingham, a man of wealth and of wit, of 
the court of Charles II., " I can honestly assure 
you I had always the highest veneration for 
both. The world and I may shake hands ; for 
I dare affirm we are heartily weary of each 
other. Oh, doctor, what a prodigal have I 
been of the most valuable of all possessions, — 
time ! I have squandered it away with a per- 
suasion it was lasting ; and now, when a few 
days w r ould be worth a hecatomb of worlds, I 
cannot flatter myself with the prospect of half 
a dozen hours. . . . You see, my dear doctor, 



176 DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 

the apprehensions of death will soon bring the 
most profligate to a proper use of their under- 
standing. I am haunted by remorse, despised 
by my acquaintance, and, I fear, forsaken by 
God." 

"Oh,- if the righteous Judge would try me 
once more," exclaimed a dying man of pleasure 
and the world, " if he would but reprieve and 
spare me a little longer, in what a spirit would 
I spend the remainder of my days ! . . . The 
day in which I should have worked is over and 
gone, and I see a sad, horrible night approach- 
ing, bringing with it the blackness of darkness 
forever. Heretofore, — woe is me ! — when God 
called, I refused ; Avhen he invited, I was of 
them that made excuse." 

Dying testimonies show in a very forcible 
manner the adaptation of religion to the wants 
of man, and that without religion life is aim- 
less and incomplete. All worldly prospects are 
saddened by the fear of death ; we lie down at 
night with the painful consciousness that we 
must die ; we awake, and are startled at our- 



A MAX OF PLEASURE. 177 

selves when we remember that we are mortal ; 
we plan, but fear that we shall never execute ; 
we build, but fear that we shall never occupy; 
we prepare for ourselves comforts for our de- 
clining years, but fear that we shall never enjoy 
them. An uncertainty veils all the events of 
the future, and constantly enforces the' truth 
that we have no security beyond the hopes 
that centre in God. A few springs light 
up the hills, a few autumns wither the 
leaves, and eternity is at hand. We cling 
to our friends; but the thought creeps over 
us sadly that the old familiar faces will soon 
gather around us for the last time, and " fare- 
well^ fall from the lips that resound with ex- 
pressions of affection. We behold the pleasant 
sunlight; but a shadow obscures its brightness 
as we reflect that we shall soon gaze from the 
window of our chamber and behold the sun, 
and feel that it has lighted all the days of our 
pilgrimage and that we shall never rejoice in 
its genial warmth again, — that it will roll around 
the seasons, the orchards of spring will bloom, 



178 A MAN OF PLEASUKE. 

the evenings of summer come and go, the 
autumn, with its fruits, its golden noontides 
and its withered leaves, pass dreamily by, but 
we shall know neither changes nor seasons. 
We shall be what our fathers are now, — dust. 

"What is wanting here?" once asked a 
courtier of a king, in a triumphal procession. 
"Continuance," was the melancholy answer. 
Continuance is impressed on nothing earthly : 
it is the gift of religion alone. Youth can- 
not continue; worldly honours and pleasures 
cannot continue; but the joys that the Holy 
Spirit imparts to the soul will continue amid 
the pangs of dissolution, will continue co- 
existent with God. Living, the Christian is 
the instrument of God's grace, and, dying, of 
his glory ; and, living or dying, he is in the 
hands of the same omnipotent and merciful 
Being. The prospects of religion brighten 
each event of life, and complete the happiness 
of man by satisfying his longings for a blissful 
immortality. 

" Glory to thee, O God !" exclaimed Gordon 



GORDON HALL. 179 

Hall, in the last spasm of Asiatic cholera. He 
was a man of strong spirit, and beheld in lofty 
and humane principles the only type of a com- 
mendable life. He sacrificed the endearments 
of home, of country, of friends, he refused posi- 
tions worthy of his talents and culture, and be- 
came a pioneer missionary to India. Death 
struck him down in the midst of his usefulness. 
He had made an overland journey of more than 
one hundred miles to Nassick, where he found 
the cholera sweeping off the inhabitants in a 
most fearful manner. Two hundred died on 
the day before he arrived. He laboured 
among the terror-stricken people, both as a 
physician and as a teacher, till his medicines 
and his books were exhausted, and then began 
to retrace his steps. On his journey he lay 
down beneath the veranda of a temple, to rest. 
He found himself cold, but prepared to renew 
his journey, — w^hen he was suddenly smitten 
with the spasms of the pestilence, throwing him 
helpless upon the ground. He assured the na- 
tives that he should soon be with Christ. 



180 FLETCHEB — WHITEFIELD. 

Eight hours of mortal agony passed. He then 
exclaimed, " Glory to thee, O God ! Glory to 
thee, O God ! Glory to thee, O God !" The 
last spasm was over, and the great spirit had 
gone to its reward. 

" I am going to throw myself under the 
wings of the cherubim before the mercy-seat," 
said Fletcher of Madeley, as he walked from 
his pulpit to the communion-table to distribute 
with his dying hands the sacred emblems. 
Again and again he sank exhausted on the 
sacramental table, amid the groans and tears of 
the congregation; but, by almost superhuman 
efforts, he completed the solemn service, and 
then went home to die. 

" I go," said Whitefield, in his last memora- 
ble sermon at Newburyport, on the day of his 
death, "to my everlasting rest. My sun of 
life has risen, shone, and is setting : nay, it is 
about to rise to shine forever. I have not lived 
in vain ; and, though I could live to preach 
Christ a thousand years, I die to be with him, 
which is far better." 



NICHOL. 181 

The poet Nichol was a young man of great 
amiableness and moral excellence. His cir- 
cumstances were adverse, and he pursued 
humble vocations ; but he cultivated his mind 
with remarkable success during his leisure 
hours, and obtained extensive literary know- 
ledge. He commenced writing for the press, 
and met with unusual encouragement ; but he 
allowed mental labour so to absorb his time as 
to undermine his constitution, and consump- 
tion became gradually apparent. He died at 
the age of twenty-three. His feelings in regaisd 
to his genius must have resembled those of the 
lamented Henry Kirke White : — 

"Fifty years, 
And who will hear of Henry ? I shall sink 
As sinks the traveller in the crowded streets 
Of busy London. Some short bustle's caused, 
A few inquiries, and the crowd close in 
And all's forgotten." 

But he does not appear to have regarded 
anxiously the laurels that death was about to 
remove from his grasp'. His thoughts soared 

16 



182 NICHOL. 

heavenward, and estranged his heart from the 
world. The sweetest and most touching of 
his compositions relates to his own death, and 
was written shortly before that event. It is a 
death-bed testimony of rare beauty, 

DEATH. 



The dew is on the summer's greenest grass, 

Through which the modest daisy blushing peeps; 

The gentle wind that like a ghost doth pass, 
A waving shadow on the corn-field keeps ; 

But I, who love them all, shall never be 

Again among the woods or on the woodland lea! 

II. 

The sun shines sweetly, — sweeter may it shine! — 
Bless' d is the brightness of a summer day ! 

It cheers lone hearts ; and why should I repine, 
Although among green fields I cannot stray? 

Woods ! I have grown, since last I heard you wave, 

Familiar with death, and neighbour of the grave. 

in. 

These words have shaken mighty human souls ; 

Like a sepulchre's echo drear they sound, — 
E'en as the owl's wild whoop at midnight rolls 

The ivied remnants of old ruins round. 
Yet wherefore tremble ? Can the soul decay, 
Or that which thinks and feels in aught e'er fade away? 



KICHOK 183 



IV. 

Are there not aspirations in each heart 
After a better, brighter world than this ? 

Longings for beings nobler m each part, — 
Things more exalted, steep'd in deeper bliss ? 

Who gave us these 9 What are they? Soul, in thee 

The bud is budding now for immortality. 

v. 

Death comes to bear me where I long to be ; 

One pang, and bright blooms the immortal flower; 
Death comes to lead me from mortality 

To lands which know not one unhappy hour ; 
I have a hope, a faith, — from sorrow here 
I'm led by death away : why should I start and fear ? 

VI. 

If I have loved the forest and the field, 
Can I not love them deeper, better, there? 

If all that Power hath made to me doth yield 

Something of good and beauty, — something fair, — 

Freed from the grossness of mortality, 

May I not love them all, and better all enjoy? 

VII. 

A change from woe to joy, — from earth to heaven, — 
Death gives me this ; it leads me calmly where 

The souls that long ago from mine were riven 

May meet again ! Death answers many a prayer. 

Bright day, shine on ! be glad : days brighter far 

Are stretch' d before mine eyes than those of mortals 
are! 



184 GREAT TRIUMPHS. 

" Lord, what is it that I see ?" said Lady 
Hastings. " Oh the greatness of the glory that 
is revealed to me !" Mrs. Rowe experienced 
such happiness in dying that she said, with 
tears of joy, that "she knew not that she had 
ever felt the like in all her life." " I feel," 
said Felicia Hemans, "as if I were sitting with 
Mary at the feet of my Redeemer, hearing the 
music of his voice and learning of him to be 
meek and lowly." No poetry, she said, could 
express, nor imagination conceive, the visions 
of blessedness that flitted across her fancy, and 
made her waking hours more delightful than 
those even that were given to temporary repose. 
" Dying," said the Rev. S. Medley, " is sweet 
work ! sweet work ! Glory, glory ! Home, 
home !" " I have experienced more happiness 
in dying two hours, this day," said a believer, 
" than in my whole life. It is worth a whole 
life to have such an' end as this." " Do you 
find that gloom in death which some appre- 
hend?" asked one of Dr. Henry. "A sweet 
falling of the soul on Jesus," was the answer. 



GREAT TRIUMPHS. 185 

"Oh, what mercy! what mercy! I don't un- 
derstand it." " He is coming ! he is coming !" 
said Ridson Darracott. " But surely this can- 
not be death. Oh, how astonishingly is the 
Lord softening my passage !" " People have 
said that death is frightful," said Dr. Gordon. 
"I look on it with pleasure." "Oh, joyful 
day!" said Dr. Hammond. "Oh, welcome, 
welcome, death!" said Hervey. "Welcome 
joy!" said Eliot. "Lord Jesus, come 
quickly!" said David Brainerd and Robert 
Hall. "To-day I shall taste the joys of 
heaven," said Zimmerman. " I shall go to my 
Father this night," said Lady Huntington. 
"What glory! the angels are waiting for me !" 
said Dr. Bateman. " This is heaven begun/' 
said Thomas Scott. " I see ! now I have 
light," said a blind Hindoo boy. " I see him 
in his beauty ! Tell the missionary that the 
blind sees. I glory in Christ !" 

" Children, when I am dead, sing a song of 
praise to God," were the dying words of the 
mother of John and Charles Wesley. The 

16* 



186 GREAT TRIUMPHS. 

thrice-repeated exclamation of Gordon Hall in 
the last spasms of Asiatic cholera, " Glory to 
thee, O God !" the sublime language of Luther, 
"Father, into thy hands do I commend my 
spirit; thou hast redeemed -me, thou faithful 
God !" the memorable words of John Quincy 
Adams, " This is the last of earth, — I am con- 
tent ;" the beautiful thoughts and anticipations 
of the Venerable Bede, of Walter Scott and Mrs. 
Hemans, are all comforting and encouraging 
to the Christian. But we know of no parting 
words more sweet and soothing than those of 
the venerable mother we have quoted. 

" Children, when I am dead, sing a song of 
praise to God." Her troubles would then be 
ended. Her body would be free from weari- 
ness and pain; peace and rest would be its 
enduring heritage. "Almost well," said the 
dying Richard Baxter, when asked concerning 
his bodily state. Death remedies all physical 
ills. Who would shed tears over deliverance 
from suffering? The consummation of her 
desires would then be attained, — to be with 



CONCLUDING REMAEKS. 187 

God. The long-wished-for rest that remains 
for his people, and the oft-contemplated glory 
of his abode, would be realized. Happiness 
coexistent with her soul would be secured. 

"Out of my last home, dark and cold, 
I shall pass to a city whose streets are gold, — 
From the silence that falls upon sin and pain, 
To the deathless joy of the angels' strain; 
Well shall be ended what ill begun, — 
Out of the shadow into the sun." 

Her spirit would be enraptured. Heaven 
would be jubilant. Well might her family 
praise God at such an hour. Who would be 
sad at a mother's joy? "Who," says an 
elegant writer, "would save his tears for a 
coronation-day ?" 

Happy, thrice happy, is he who, reviewing 
the days of his pilgrimage in the decline of a 
long and devout life, and marking, in all the 
changes through which he has passed, the love 
and providence of God in answer to his well- 
meant and generous endeavours, can tune his 
sacred lyre, and sing, — 



188 CONCLUDING KEMAKKS. 

« 

"Thy mercy heard my infant prayer; 
Thy love, with kind parental care, 

Sustain'd my childish days: 
Thy goodness watch'd my ripening youth, 
And form'd my heart to love thy truth, 

And fill'd my lips with praise. 

"And now, in age and grief, thy Name 

Doth still my languid heart inflame 

And bow my faltering knee : 
Oh, yet this bosom feels the fire ; 
This trembling hand and drooping lyre 

Have yet a strain for thee. 

"Yes, broken, tuneless, still, Lord, 
This voice, transported, shall record 

Thy goodness tried so long, 
Till, sinking slow with calm decay, 
Its feeble murmurs melt away 

Into a seraph's song." 

Reader, are you doing what you can for 
your moral and religious elevation and for 
the welfare of the world? If not, are you 
satisfied with your life ? — Does it pay ? 

No, you are not satisfied. The thought of 
death, in a most unwelcome manner, steals upon 
you at each place of amusement, in each haunt 
of luxury and ease. The demise of friends 
fills you with alarm. You awake at night, 
and are startled at what you are. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 189 

Perhaps your general habits are moral. You 
are merely leading a life of self-gratification. 
Books, travel, amusement, society, are enliven- 
ing your passage — whither? To the bed of 
death, to the bar of God, to the silence of the , 
grave. 

In the lost opportunities of a lifetime a 
noble character might be builded and a noble 
reputation obtained. In the wasted moments 
of a worldly life eternal joys might be secured; 
in the waste of life for empty titles and 
superfluous wealth an eternal kingdom and 
crown might be won. 

These passing moments, whether improved 
or not, are moulding the soul for an eternal 
destiny. 

Says John Wesley, " To candid, reasonable 
men I am not afraid to lay open what have 
been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have 
thought, I am a creature of a day, passing 
through life as an arrow through the air. I 
am a spirit come from God and returning to 
God, just hovering over the great gulf, till, a 



190 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

few minutes hence, I am no more seen. I drop 
into an unchangeable eternity ! I want to 
know one thing, — the way to heaven, how to 
land safe on that happy shore. God himself 
has condescended to teach the way. For this 
very end he came from heaven. He hath 
written it down in a book ! Oh, give me that 
book! At any price, give me the book of 
God ! I have it : here is knowledge enough 
for me. Let me be a man of one book. Here, 
then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. I 
sit down alone': only God is here. In his pre- 
sence I open, I read his book ; for this end, — to 
find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt con- 
cerning the meaning of what I read? Does any 
thing appear dark and intricate? I lift up my 
heart to the Father of Lights. Lord, is it not 
thy word, 'If any man lack wisdom, let him 
ask of God'? Thou 'givest liberally, and 
upbraidest not.' Thou hast said, 'If any be 
willing to do my will, he shall know.' I am 
willing to do : let me know thy will. I then 
search after and consider parallel passages of 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 191 

Scripture, 'comparing spiritual things with 
spiritual/ I meditate thereon with all the 
attention and earnestness of which my mind 
is capable." 

There, reader, is an example for your con- 
sideration and practice. Farewell. 



THE END. 



